The Center Honors John Gruber (founder, 1936-2018) with local exhibition Faces of Railroading at the Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wisconsin

Faces of Railroading: The Making of Madison and Dane County is currently on display in the Art Court at the Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wisconsin from August 6, 2019 to January 26, 2020.

The exhibition looks at the historic role railroaders played in the development of Dane County, Wisconsin, home of the Center for Railroad Photography & Art. Through historic and contemporary photographs, the exhibition creates a visual conversation about the significance of railroad workers and how railroads impacted the structure of Madison’s neighborhoods, creating both physical and cultural spaces.

Special attention is given to railroader neighborhoods and their geographic proximity to the railroad yards. The exhibition takes a focused look on the individual workers, the unsung heroes of the rail lines, and highlights the importance of the industry in the growth of the city of Madison, Dane country, and the surrounding service area.

The exhibition was curated and heavily features the work of John Gruber, founder of Center for Railroad Photography & Art, who died on October 9, 2018. His influence on the field of railroad photography is impossible to overstate, from his own black-and-white work beginning in the 1960s to his 2018 book that reexamines the lives and photography of Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg. Classic Trains magazine dubbed him a “provocateur of railroad photography” in a 2014 profile by Kevin Keefe.

The exhibition also features photographs by Henry Koshollek, Richard Gruber, Robert Eineke, and William D. Middleton, plus images from the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Photograph by Henry A. Koshollek

Beebe and Clegg: Their Enduring Photographic Legacy

Beebe and Clegg: Their Enduring Photographic Legacy, a new book from the Center for Railroad Photography and Art, tells about how partners Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg introduced railroad photography and the world of railroading to wide popular audiences. Beebe (1902-1966) initially championed the three-quarters or “wedge-of-pie” perspective in his photography. Clegg (1916-1979) introduced a more innovative outlook, boosting creativity for both of them. Their photographs shine in this new book, produced with the best of modern digitization, design, and printing techniques.

Over the course of eight chapters, the book traces Beebe and Clegg’s life and times together, their visual influences, short lines, narrow gauge lines, Nevada and the Virginia & Truckee, and their photography. The book includes 222 images from the California State Railroad Museum Library and Archives, all scanned from negatives and carefully cleaned and checked, revealing surprises. Many are previously unpublished. Thirty-six additional images come from other sources. “Their legacy is larger than the publications they produced, for they demonstrated that railroads serve America as an icon of its experience,” authors John Gruber and John Ryan conclude.

$65, plus $5 for domestic shipping, hardcover, 8.5×11 inches, 224 pages, duotone

International shipping is available; please inquire by email at info [at] railphoto-art.org

Wallace W. Abbey: A Life in Railroad Photography

Wallace W. Abbey: A Life in Railroad Photography, published by Indiana University Press in 2018 and written and edited by the Center’s Kevin P. Keefe and Scott Lothes, presents a cohesive and comprehensive collection of 184 photographs by Wallace W. Abbey. The authors drew from Abbey’s collection of 25,000 black-and-white negatives, which came to the Center in 2010. The 10×10-inch hardcover book, published by Indiana University Press in 2018, charts Abbey’s fifty-year career documenting the railroad industry. Beginning in the 1940s, Abbey masterfully combined journalistic and artistic vision to transform everyday moments in transportation into magical photographs. A photographer, journalist, historian, and railroad industry executive, he helped people from many different backgrounds understand and appreciate what was often taken for granted: a world of locomotives, passenger trains, big-city terminals, small-town depots, and railroaders. During his lifetime he witnessed and photographed sweeping changes in the railroad industry from the steam era to the era of diesel locomotives and electronic communication. Wallace W. Abbey: A Life in Railroad Photography profiles the life and work of this legendary photographer and showcases the transformation of transportation and photography after World War II.

$50 plus $5 for domestic shipping, hardcover, 10×10 inches, 240 pages, b/w

International shipping is available; please inquire by email at info [at] railphoto-art.org