Richard Steinheiemer

Biography

Richard Steinheimer (1929-2011) was one of the world’s greatest railroad photographers, who blazed a trail of creativity across California and the American West for six decades and inspired generations of photographers.

In 2022 and 2023, the Center received nearly all of Steinheimer’s color photography, which comprises about 30,000 slides, several thousand of his black and white prints, digital scans spanning his entire career, black and white negatives circa 1975 and later, plus contact sheets, manuscripts, correspondence, and more. See the official announcement here.

“Stein” – as he was fondly known to friends, family, and fans – was born on August 23, 1929, in Chicago, Illinois, and he moved west in 1935 with his mother and sister, settling in Southern California. In the 1940s and 1950s he shook up the world of traditional railroad photography with a wholly unique style that included daring action images that leaped out of the camera frame and sweeping panoramas that captured trains in their environments, from magnificent Donner Pass and the stark Mojave Desert to bustling cities, railroad yards, and small rural towns. With a lanky six-foot, six-inch frame, the master of light and composition was fueled by a passionate – and sometimes manic – pursuit of dynamic images, but his true secret weapons were his brilliant and creative mind, a friendly, humble, and infectious personality, and his engaging smile. His demeanor helped him connect with people to make countless soulful portraits of railroaders, rail passengers, and everyday Americans from a now-vanished era.

In dozens of landmark books and in the pages of Trains magazine and others, he narrated his sprawling photographic essays with lively, joyful writing that celebrated the railroad experience and invited viewers to jump in their car —or board a train – and vicariously join Stein on his latest adventure.

His black and white work is timeless and striking, and his transition to color transparency film provided a new canvas with which to play, reaching new levels of creativity and storytelling with light and mood amid the changing colors of western railroads in the 1970s and 1980s. For decades, while creating milestone railroad projects, Steinheimer was also in high demand as an innovative Silicon Valley photographer, shooting for Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, Apple, and other pioneering technology companies. See the Center’s Zoom presentation on Stein’s commercial photography career by Ken Rehor and Elrond Lawrence.

While his images appeared in dozens of books, he authored or co-authored eight of his own: Backwoods Railroads of the West, Western Trains, The Electric Way Across the Mountains, Growing Up with Trains (co-authored with Don Sims), Growing Up with Trains II (co-authored with Ted Benson), Diesels Over Donner (co-authored with Dick Dorn), Whistles Across the Land (co-authored with his wife Shirley Burman), and A Passion for Trains. Additionally, his career and photography were the focus of author-photojournalist Ted Benson’s book Done Honest & True, based on Benson’s articles about Steinheimer in the magazine Vintage Rails (edited by John Gruber, key founder of CRP&A). In 1983 the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society presented him with its first-ever Senior Achievement Award for photography (today known as the Fred A. and Jane R. Stindt Photography Award).

That same year he met fellow photographer Shirley Burman, and their love story created a formidable partnership that thrived for decades. Together they worked on various projects for Southern Pacific, Amtrak, Burlington Northern, TTX Corp., the California State Railroad Museum, and other clients.

In the early 2000s Steinheimer was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. His work was celebrated in various rail publications, at special events at the California State Railroad Museum, and with another award from the R&LHS: the 2005 George W. and Constance M. Hilton Book Award for Passion for Trains. As his wife Shirley cared for him, she also became the caretaker of his collection, cataloging and digitizing his negatives and slides. This included digitizing many of the black-and-white negatives that Stein sold to friend Everett DeGolyer in the late 1960s, which now reside at the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Stein passed away on May 4, 2011, due to complications from Alzheimer’s Disease, leaving an immeasurable legacy on the world of photography and treasured memories among his family and friends.