Tuesday, October 5, 2021
7:00 p.m. (U.S. Central Time), on Zoom
Registration closes on Monday, October 4 at 4:30 p.m. (CDT)
Railroaders: Jack Delano’s Homefront Photography, demonstrates that the railroad industry—like ethnic, religious, and neighborhood enclaves—fostered its own communities and networks. Through the stories of the lives of the men and women of railroading, this collaborative exhibition between the Center for Railroad Photography & Art and the Chicago History Museum demonstrates how the people of one industrial community represent, in microcosm, the vastness of Chicago society and, by extension, American society as a whole.
Join Bon French, a board member at both the Center for Railroad Photography & Art and the Chicago History Museum, in a presentation on the exhibition and its forthcoming display at the Peoria Riverfront Museum in Peoria, Illinois from October 9, 2021 to January 2, 2022.
The exhibition features some sixty of the remarkable images created in 1942–1943 by photographer Jack Delano as part of his assignment to document the nation’s railroad story for the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information. While Delano also photographed infrastructure and rolling stock, he concentrated on the people who did the work of railroading. Roy Stryker, head of the photographic surveys for both FSA and its successor OWI, instructed Delano to document in pictures the importance of the railroad industry during wartime and the contributions made by railroaders and their families to World War II on the home front.
This event is free.
Chicago & North Western Railroad towerman R.W. Mayberry of Elmhurst, Ill., at the Proviso yard in May 1943. He operates a set of retarders and switches at the hump, Melrose Park (near Chicago), Ill. Jack Delano, 1914-1997, LC-USW36-588