Conversations 2023

Eugene will take the audience on a photographic journey that begins in southern Africa while growing up with steam power in everyday service and continues to the United States East Coast. From big 4-8-4s to the New York City Subway and Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, Eugene will share images that span five decades and cover a variety of motive power and railway operations.

Eugene was born in Cape Town, South Africa and his lifelong love for trains was inspired by an early childhood birthday gift from his parents – a Hornby O Gauge clockwork train set. Most of his career has been spent in the travel and tourism industry, including fourteen years with SARTravel, a division of the South African Railways. Over the years, business and personal travels have taken him to twenty-four countries, with most of his photography centering around railways. His work has appeared in International Railway Journal, Eisenbahn Romantik, Railways Africa, SA Rail, Railfan & Railroad, and Trains, as well as CRP&A publications.

Drones have become a mainstream hobby in today’s photography scene, especially rail photography. Chris and Brian will analyze the photography aspects of drones, their evolution over recent years, and how they fit into a photographer’s array of electronic equipment used to capture images trackside.

Chris Guss was born in St. Louis and is a lifelong resident of the Midwest. After graduating college, Chris worked in the railroad industry for Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, and BNSF in both operations and management roles. He later pursued freelance work along with writing and managing news columns for CTC Board and Railroads Illustrated magazines. For the past eleven years, he has worked as a correspondent for Trains Magazine, focusing primarily on locomotive-related topics. He’s been making images for almost forty years and flying drones for a decade.

Brian Caswell was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan where he still lives today. He is a project manager in the automotive engineering industry and owns a motorsports photography business named SpeedShot Photography that follows snowmobile, auto, and boat racing. He has been photographing for twenty years and experimenting with drones for the past two. Brian has been featured in several magazines and newspapers, but most recently in Railfan and Railroad magazine.

This presentation will encapsulate the first twenty years of William’s railroad photography career. Highlights will include the former Denver and Rio Grande Western network, the rails around southern Arizona, and the railroads that encompass much of the former Santa Fe Railway network in Arizona and New Mexico.

William is a railroad veteran based in the southwestern United States with over sixteen years working on the rails. Born in the small cattle town of Willcox, Arizona, William has roamed much of the southwest before settling in Albuquerque.

Tom will share highlights from his celebrated career, including his groundbreaking slide duplication process and synchronized flash night photography. He’ll take us back as far as the early 1950s and present images across the United States from the Rio Grande Western to the electrified rails on the northern corridor.

Tom Gildersleeve is a native Californian and holds a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Stanford University. After graduation, he served for three years as a lieutenant in the Air Force and went on to a forty-year career with the California Department of Transportation.

Tom is a self-taught photographer, and his work has been extensively published in books, magazines, and calendars. Early on he developed a passion for putting a dramatically changing railroad scene on film and developed his own style of photography to record it. That included creating the apparatus to take night photographs of trains with synchronized flash. He also pioneered the process to create high-quality duplicate slide sets with equipment he personally designed.

Tom received the Winterail Hall of Fame award for his photography in 2012 and in 2014 received The Fred R. and Jane A. Stindt Photography Award from the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society for both his own photography and his preservation work on color images of other early railroad photographers. His slide collection will eventually be donated to the Center for Railroad Photography and Art.

Gordon will take the audience on a journey through his storied career from his earliest days growing up in southern California to the beginning and development of his breathtaking photography. From Southern Pacific lines in California to UP on Sherman Hill and 1960s Mexico City, Gordon has traveled extensively to explore new railroads and distant places.

Gordon was born in Los Angeles and is a lifelong Californian. He attended the California Institute of Technology and made a career in the aerospace industry. Gordon became interested in rail photography in the mid-1950s while in college. Since then, he has visited forty-five countries and fifty states while shooting mostly Kodachrome slides at ASA 10 and later 25. He co-authored the book Southland with Tom Gildersleeve and the late Hank Mills.

While David and Line’ often refer to themselves as ‘struggling artists’, their reputation and prolific careers speak for themselves in terms of their success. The talented painting duo will showcase some of their best work.

David holds the honor of having his paintings hang in some of America’s most prestigious collections, both public and private. He began painting at the young age of fourteen with a scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago. He went on to study and graduate from the American Academy of Art with an associate degree in technology with a major in fine art. In addition to being one of America’s foremost painters of steam-era railroad subjects, his portfolio also includes significant works depicting traditional American landscapes and coastal subjects of the sea coasts and the Duneland shore of the Great Lakes.

Line’ has devoted her life to the love of family, faith, and her interpretation of the beauty that surrounds and inspires her, especially the beautiful effects of light and shadow found in America’s neighborhoods, landscapes, and street scenes. She studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Her career has spanned over thirty years and she has won both national and state awards.

Award-winning photojournalist Steve Smedley will showcase railroad employees at work. With a focus on the Midwest, Steve has a distinct talent for capturing the real and human moments of railroading. “I’ve always loved telling stories through the lens,” says Steve, and as a lifelong railroad photographer, Steve has many moments to share.

Steve Smedley is a photojournalist based in Central Illinois. He worked for thirty-two years at The Pantagraph in Bloomington, Illinois, after working for the Peoria-Journal Star in Peoria, Illinois. Steve received a Humanitarian Award from the National and Illinois Press Photographers Association for discovering a fire and helping rescue children from a Bloomington house fire in 1989. He has covered strikes, murders, tornadoes, cancer patients, and politicians through his photojournalism.

The Center’s collections staff will unveil recently processed photography and discuss new cataloging and preservation plans. Director of archives & collections Adrienne Evans and associate archivist Heather Sonntag will share highlights from the Richard Steinheimer and Shirley Burman Steinheimer Collection. Adrienne will also give general updates regarding collections growth and new developments at the Center. Reference and digital projects archivist Erin Rose will discuss her work with the John C. Illman Collection as well as other responsibilities. Acquisitions & marketing coordinator Elrond Lawrence will show highlights from his work with the Center’s newest collection donors.

Adrienne Evans received a master’s degree from UW-Madison’s School of Library Information Studies in 2014. She worked at History Colorado for two years before coming to the Center in 2017.

Elrond Lawrence has been the Center’s acquisitions & marketing coordinator since last year. In addition to publicity and communications, Elrond works with collection donors to ensure the smooth transfer of their materials into the Center’s archive. His career has spanned writing, photography, and communications.

Heather Sonntag is an associate archivist with the Center and is currently processing slides from the Richard Steinheimer and Shirley Burman Steinheimer Collection. She holds a doctorate in cultural history and a masters in library and information science from UW-Madison.

Erin Rose joined the Center in 2017 as an intern, and she returned in 2021 to the new role of reference and digital projects archivist. She answers image requests, processes collections, and has managed the migration of files for the Center’s adoption of a new collections management system.