Tag Archives: O. Winston Link

Technical Genius: Behind the scenes with O. Winston Link’s famous photographs

Take an in-depth and behind-the-scenes look into technical aspects of several photographs of O. Winston Link, the famed 1950s railroad photographer who iconically captured some of the last steam trains in America, set against the picturesque backdrop of rural Appalachia. Ashley Webb, curator of collections and exhibitions for the O. Winston Link Museum, will present and examine the notebooks, letters, and installation images of some of the photographer’s more iconic and technically complex works.

Tuesday, July 9, at 7:00 p.m. Central Time

(5:00 p.m. Pacific Time, 6:00 p.m. Mountain, and 8:00 p.m. Eastern)

Click here to register.

This is a free Zoom event, open to everyone. This presentation will be recorded and later posted on our YouTube page.

Ashley Webb received her B.A. in History and Anthropology from Longwood University, in Farmville, Virginia, and her M.A. in Museum Studies from Bournemouth University, in Dorset, England. She is currently the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions and acting Executive Director with the Historical Society of Western Virginia, which operates both the Roanoke History and the O. Winston Link Museums. In addition to her job with the Historical Society, Ashley works with several local museums as a contract museum collections specialist. Her specialty is fashion history and she owns Bustle Textiles, a historic dress preservation company.

Based in Roanoke, Virginia, the O. Winston Link Museum collection comprises the striking photographic and auditory works developed by photographer-artist O. Winston Link between 1955 and 1960. A successful commercial photographer from New York, Link brought his studio outdoors to create carefully arranged images designed to convey the end of Norfolk & Western’s steam locomotives and the communities and countryside they passed through. The museum – which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year — is the repository for all of Link’s Norfolk & Western negatives, and contains both rotating and permanent exhibitions; learn more at: roanokehistory.org

Register here

Above: O. Winston Link’s masterpiece “Hot Shot Eastbound at the Drive-In, Iaeger, West Virginia, 1956.” Below: A behind-the-scenes view of Link in action, from the July 9 presentation.

Behind the Photographs of O. Winston Link – Thomas Garver

Monday, July 18, 2022
7:00 p.m. (U.S. Central Time), on Zoom
Registration closes on Sunday, July 17 at 4:30 p.m. (CST)

Now Available on YouTube

Thomas Garver, the former assistant/agent of Link and the founding curator of the O. Winston Link Museum, will present Behind the Photographs of O. Winston Link. Garver will discuss the life and work of Link as well as his remarkable photographs of the Norfolk & Western Railroad.

 

Thomas H. Garver is a retired art museum director, writer, and independent curator. In 1957-58, just out of college, he worked for O. Winston Link as a part-time assistant in Link’s New York City studio. Part of his assistantship included three trips, totaling about a month, to Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina to aid Link in the creation of his visionary five-year documentation of the Norfolk and Western Railway at the end of steam power on the line.

Tom Garver assisted Winston Link in the field, and subsequently contributed a chapter to Link’s first book, Steam, Steel & Stars, published in 1987. Tom was the sole author of the text for the second book of Link’s railroad photos, The Last Steam Railroad in America, published in 1995. In 1994, Garver became Link’s business agent, and following Link’s death in 2001, Garver served as organizing curator of the O. Winston Link Museum, located in the former N&W passenger station in Roanoke, Virginia. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

This event is free.

 

 

Train #2 arrives at the Waynesboro Station, Waynesboro, Virgnia, April 14, 1955. Courtesy of the O. Winston Link Museum.