O. Winston Link -- Last Days of Steam Locomotives

This collection of O. Winston Links is brought to you by Graflex.Org

In 1955, photographer O. Winston Link set out with flashbulbs, specialized reflectors, and an assistant to capture the last days of steam locomotives in the US.

Link collected the these images two books, Steam, Steel, and Stars (published by Harry N. Abrams) and in a new book The Last Steam Railroad in America (text by Thomas Garver, published by Harry N. Abrams, October 1995).

On August 20, 1996, the Westchester (New York) county prosecutor's office issued a press release cautioning anyone purchasing O. Winston Link prints to have them verified, since a number of them had been stolen.

The Spring 1996 issue of Photographer's Forum* magazine carries an excellent interview with Link, now 81, and includes some of striking images from the 1995 book, and rare pictures of his equipment. For his dramatic outdoor shots, he sometimes used up to sixteen flash bulb units with powerful Wabash #0 bulbs.

In October 1995, the Smithsonian Institution offered a retrospective of Link's work.New!

The November 30, 1996 issue of the Roanoke Times (Virginia) printed a brief history of Link's work, and includedsome recent events. Read about his print of Old Maud at the Cherry Creek Cyclery site, where you can also buy a copy of his books.

Photon Magazine, the UK photo journal, has an image of "Main Line on Main Street, Northfolk, West Virginia, 1958" at their site. (Don't scroll down the page if you are offended by Diane Arbus's photography, however...)

One of Link's most well-known images, Hot Shot (1956), was printed in two different ways. The image here is shown with an airplane on the movie screen, but reportedly a different image was stripped in for a print made for a railroad company's annual report. The Cherry Creek Cyclery also has a scan of it, called Iager Drive-In.

Tobias Wolff's recent collection of short stories, The Night in Question (Knopf, 1996), features Link's photograph Norfolk & Western Train No. 16, The Cavalier, leaves Williamson, West Virginia, on a rainy day, December 1958 on the dust jacket.


* Photographer's Forum: 511 Olive St., Santa Barbara, CA 93101 1-805-963-0439.

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