Chicago Project Expanding

The Center’s innovative “Faces of Chicago’s Railroad Community: Photographs by Jack Delano” exhibition has received a larger and more prominent location at the Chicago History Museum, as well as new dates. The exhibition will now appear in the Green-Field Gallery, right off the main stairs and the only elevator in the museum, ensuring that every visitor will see it. The gallery’s additional space will permit using larger photographs, more artifacts, and the incorporation of contemporary photographs of portrait subjects’ families. These have been made by Jack Delano’s son, Pablo—a talented photographer himself and a professor of fine arts at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. The exhibition now will open on April 4, 2014, and remain on display through August 10, 2015. As senior curator Russell Lewis explained, “Faces has thus moved up on the CHM marquee, and we are looking forward to showcasing it in a larger form and more central location.”
South Water Street freight depot in Chicago
Illinois Central’s South Water Street freight terminal in Chicago, April 1943. The image is among the sixty photographs that will appear in the Center’s exhibition “Faces of Chicago’s Railroad Community: Photographs by Jack Delano,” which will open April 4, 2014, at the Chicago History Museum. Learn more about the exhibition.

Trains that Passed in the Night: Photographs by O. Winston Link

Hot Shot Eastbound, Iaeger, West Virginia, 1956Photograph by O. Winston Link and copyright W. Conway Link.

January 7 through February 17, 2013; lecture by Thomas H. Garver, Link’s former assistant, on January 10, 2013. Purdue University Galleries, Yue-Kong Pao Hall of Visual and Performing Arts, 552 West Wood Street, West Lafayette, Indiana, 765-494-3061. The exhibition recognizes the railroad work of O. Winston Link, a Brooklyn, New York, native and commercial photographer who became well-recognized for his complex images of factory and industrial plant interiors. For Link, the steam railroad was a vital ingredient to “the good life” in America, an essential part of the fabric of our lives. It is this quality—of life, not machinery—which he captures so artfully in his photographs, showcasing the final years of steam railroading on the Norfolk & Western Railway—the last major railroad in America to operate exclusively with steam power. The broad appeal of Link’s photographs is derived not so much from the images of the steam locomotives themselves (although they are regarded as some of the best), but from the way in which their inclusion expresses the photographer’s deeply felt respect for the quality of life that the steam railroad reflected and supported for so many years in the United States.

Railroad Heritage Article Wins R&LHS Award

Jack Holzhueter’s article, “Olive W. Dennis: B&O Polymath,” received the 2011 David P. Morgan Article Award from the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society. The article, a collaborative effort that began with Shirley Burman Steinheimer’s files about women railroaders, appeared in number 24 (2010). Holzhueter, a consultant to the Center, is a retired researcher and editor for the Wisconsin Historical Society. “We are indebted to Jack Holzhueter and those who assisted him for doing the requisite research and writing this fascinating article about a truly remarkable woman,” Lyle Key wrote in the Fall-Winter issue of Railroad History, published by R&LHS.

2013 Conversations Conference Scheduled April 12-14

The next Conversations about Photography conference will be held April 12-14, 2013, at Lake Forest College. Thanks to the generosity of this year’s conference patrons, for the first time scholarships (PDF application) are available for two young or emerging photographers. Watch for announcements here and on our Facebook page. Visit the conference page for a review of the 2012 event.

Chicago Tribune Features Photographer Ganaway’s Family

In a major story, the Chicago Tribune has featured the family of King Daniel Ganaway, an African-American photographer profiled in Railroad Heritage (scan of article) in 2001. Ganaway won a major award for his photograph of the Twentieth Century Limited at La Salle Street Station in Chicago. The image launched his career as a commercial and industrial photographer in the 1920s and 1930s. The Tribune headlined its story, published October 26, “Family’s Racial History Comes into Focus.” The Center’s president, John Gruber, has written more articles about Ganaway, who is included in the Center’s list of memorable 20th century photographers.