In American culture, the railroad is often viewed as a collection of marvelous technical feats, of brutish powerful locomotives hurtling thousands of tons of freight at great speeds. Beyond this technical and technological aspect, however, the railroad has always been a place of people, a machine sure, but a machine run by human beings. Thanks to social and technological changes, however, the railroad worker of today is no longer seen or heard from on a daily basis. Instead, they exist inside a closed, wholesale-side world, one that runs 24/7/365 but largely out of view of the public consciousness. Linda Niemann, a former brakewoman on the Southern Pacific, seems more adept than any other contemporary writer at cracking open this insular, often nocturnal world to outsiders. In Railroad Noir, Niemanns’s third book, she again plunges readers into the realms of the railroad world through a series of short non-fiction narratives, accompanied by the moody, pensive imagery of photography Joel Jensen.

Following the acknowledgements is a brief introduction shared between the writer Niemann and the photographer Jensen, primarily discussing how the book came into being after many years working together on articles. The book then launches into the heart of the matter, 20 stories or life on the railroad by Niemann. The first ten are each accompanied by a single opening image from Jensen in black-and-white. Following this group comes a gallery of 21 color images and a map of the Southern Pacific system, Neimann’s former employer. The map, though handy, seems slightly incongruous slapped down here in Jensen’s photos, and would have made more sense at one end or the other of the book. Next come two short stories that begin with color images, and then seven more stories accompanied by black-and-white photographs. One chapter, “Lord of the Night,” is accompanied by a photograph of an apparently ancient drawing of a Native American god; it is unclear whose photograph this is as it is not accompanied by a location, does not fit Jensen’s usual style or subject matter, and is not included in the publisher’s official count of photos in the book. A glossary of railroad terms rounds out the work.

Railroad Noir is essentially an anthology of Niemann’s stories. Some of these were printed previously as parts of her first book, Boomer, or in the pages of TRAINS Magazine (where they were likewise accompanied by the photos of Joel Jensen). Niemann’s writing is intense and often poignant as she tells tales of the hidden underclass who populate the railroad. Her personal landscape is made up of dry, dingy built spaces, vast and terrifyingly beautiful desserts, and windblown openness. This is not the ordinary America we all see and experience, but a private, clannish world, a refuge for the people who, as Niemann puts it, are “on the borders” of life. She is brutally honest and raw with her descriptions of her co-workers lives, from drug addiction to sexual problems and alcoholism. Niemann is no finger-wagger, however, and spends considerable time examining her own life with all of its flaws and mistakes. Yet at no time does Niemann come off as moralizing. She presents this world not without a judgement for or against it, but instead with a kind of documentarian’s sensibility. The railroad world and its inhabitants, to Niemann, are a microcosm of humanity that has value and should be recorded and understood. Her writing is both open and slightly sentimental, which only adds to the complexity and confusion over what to think of this part of society.

The pairing of the text with Jensen’s photos is very complimentary, as Jensen has a gritty loner’s eye that immediately makes the viewer feel like both an insider and an outcast. Images like “Mechanics on break” on page 62 or “Truck stop” on page 110 speak loudly of the isolation of this world view. More poignant, however, are the two images of railroad workers walking in the snow towards their motels, “Off duty” on page 70 and “Home away from home” on page 71. Both have an eerie, unearthly glow to them from a world lit only by off-color, man-made light. Beyond these pools of glow, in the blackness, there is, perhaps, another world out there sleeping, but if so it is one which the denizens of the railroad have no part or place in.

The format of the book is much like a photography book, not a book of text, and as a result it sometimes feels that there are not enough photos from Jensen. Beyond that, the book could also have benefitted from more images to help a fresh reader develop a better understanding of the tone of the world that Niemann is describing. As far as the text, Niemann continues to give us compellingly written stories of her time on the railroad. Occasionally, however, she delves into unusual side-jaunts away from the railroad — one such jaunt takes us with her to Mexico where she learns Spanish by immersion. It is only after a few of these narrative sidebars occur that the reasoning becomes clear: this is not a topical book about life on the railroad, but rather a memoir of someone who worked for and lived in the railroad world. In some ways, this limits the book, as an audience seeking a more topical focus might find these side-jaunts to be distracting. As a method of carrying forward a sense of authenticity, however, the decision to include these extra-railroad memories is quite effective. The title, however, remains deceptive: “Railroad Noir: The American West at the End of the Twentieth Century” does not very well convey that the book is, in fact, a highly personal biographical narrative. These are minor quibbles, however, and both the narrative and the images chosen are all top-notch work.

Fit and finish shows the book itself is a quality product. Photo reproduction looks to be good, and color is consistent and fresh. No image is spread across two pages, a stylistic choice that retains the power of most of the photos but at the price of displaying them rather small. The paper is solid and thick and should hold up well, but it also has an odd, rubbery feel to the fingers. The size of the book is moderate — its horizontal frame will fit on a standard shelf — but there are some odd quirks resulting from this format choice. Although this is basically a book of stories accompanied by some photographs, this size makes it inconvenient to take as a piece of travel reading. It is also not ideal to read in your lap in an armchair, or in bed. Despite the fact that it is a fairly small coffee-table book, a coffee-table book it remains, and it feels best to read it at a table. This is not exactly the most comfortable place to spend time getting lost in Niemann’s compellingly penned world.

Overall, Railroad Noir is an interesting book with some sophisticated photos and a moving set of narratives. Photographers may find the book a good addition to their collection, but this is not primarily a photography book and it is certainly not a pictorial aimed at a typical railfan market. The book should prove interesting to those with an interest the human and social sides of railroading as well as those who enjoy railroad literature. .

Railroad Noir: The American West at the End of the Twentieth Century is available from Amazon, Powell’s Books, as well as directly from the publisher.

Classic Steam: Timeless Photographs of North American Steam Railroading

By John Gruber. Forward by William L. Withun. Fall River Press, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10016; http://www.sterlingpublishing.com/imprints?imprint=Fall+River+Press; 12.25 x 12.8 in; hardbound; 224 pages, 43 color and 248 b/w photos, $19.98

The steam era of railroading in North America remains one of the most evocative subjects in transportation history. The period has become a romanticized, almost stereotyped part of the American narrative, part-and-parcel of our national myth along side Paul Revere, wagon trains on the Oregon Trail, and the storied two-lane blacktop of Route 66. Even to those far too young to have witnessed the steam era, the iconography of the word “train” remains the cartoon-like image of a steam locomotive, huffing and chuffing, belching steam, smoke, and cinders. In Classic Steam: Timeless Photographs of North American Steam Railroading, author John Gruber attempts to take us on a photographic trip back to that era.

The book opens with a forward by William L. Withuhn, a curator at the Smithsonian and author of a previous work along similar themes, the volume Spirit of Steam from the mid 1990s. As Withuhn notes, Classic Steam is meant to be a follow-on to that volume. The forward text — like all subsequent texts throughout this rather hefty volume — is short, and frames the work as a collection of photographs of the late steam era in the United States.

Following the forward, Gruber presents us with a three page introduction, by far the longest stretch of text in the entire work. Much of the text discusses the steam locomotive itself, rather than railroading in the steam era in a general sense. Although Gruber does briefly — and perhaps presciently — mention the influence of photographers Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg on the cultural image of the steam era railroad, this text is primarily a short nostalgic romp, even going so far as to rope in a mention of Lionel toy trains and the author’s grandson.

Next come eight chapters, each containing a multitude of photographs. Each chapter is themed: shortlines, narrow gauge, local passenger trains, luxury named trains, mainline railroads, people, stations, and steam in preservation today. These themes are not always immediately evident, however, as some chapter titles carry quotes such as “Connections to…” and no explanatory deck. Following the title is a short text — about 200 words or less on average — that provides a bit more explanation, but little in the way of additional detail. After this brief interlude of text — opposite a full page image — we launch into the meat of the chapter, consisting of primarily black-and-white images. Although some images are shown at less than a quarter page, most are bigger, and many are shown either full page (and full bleed) or double truck.

Also interspersed within each chapter are what could best be described as mini features, each relating to the chapter’s theme. These usually consist of 2-3 images across a two-page spread, accompanied by a text of some sort, usually about the action caught within the images themselves. Following the last chapter is an index, a brief listing of biographies for some of the photographers of the book, and some other housekeeping material.

Having almost no interpretive text, this book is dedicated to the images themselves. Gruber has chosen to give us a rich range of photographers, including the likes of J. Parker Lamb, Richard Steinheimer, David Plowden, Jim Shaughnessy, and Phil Hastings. He also gives us outsiders like Farm Services Administration (FSA) photographers Gordon Parks and Jack Delano. (A number of the latter’s precious color images adorn the book.) We also get work from less well known photographers such as Frank Barry, James P. Gallagher, and John Shaw, and a number of others. Finally, the author includes a number of his own images. Each photograph in the work is accompanied by insightful, sometimes lengthy captions.

A number of images stick out as notable. One of the finer conventional scenes is that on page 29, a photograph of a small Texas shortline by Fred Springer. A small, generic looking steam locomotive approaches across a blank, rolling grassland, belching out a plume of smoke with the depth of black usually associated with burning tires. To the left and far away are some low scrubby ridges, and to the right there is only a boney old pole line, receding into the lonestar distance. There is a vast emptiness here that is timeless. On page 40, we have a view from a similar region, this time Colorado and a scrappy narrow gauge line from that state. The photographer, Barclay Robsinson, has shot from the roof top of some of the train’s boxcars, looking up towards the head end and against the sun. Two plumes of dense black exhaust pile skyward, one from the lead engine, and one from a helper tucked in mid-train. It is not just a photograph of a train, it is a classic photograph of the mythic West. Looking at this image, one almost expects to see Wyatt Earp riding down the dreaded red-sashed cowboys on the flanks of the distant rolling hills.

More precious, perhaps, are some of the human interest photographs. An image on page 102 from the Arthur Dubin collection at Lake Forest College shows a worker at Chicago Union Station in 1938, adjusting a new electric sign for the Pennsylvania Railroad. There is only the monolithic sign with its promises of escape, and the face of the worker awash in its reflected glow. What is there, beyond the darkness, between the worker and the sign? The picture is sharp and precise, and the years between the viewer and the viewed fall away into the shadows. Another image of labor and the steam era is found on page 153, in a photograph of a young hostler in Winnepeg, Manitoba helping to refuel a locomotive with coal. Taken by FSA veteran Gordon Parks, the hostler is fresh faced and caught mid-work, with no artifice or pose, his hair tossed in the breeze and his feet lost in the swirl of blurry coal dust. The photograph does display some odd yellow haze, as if it had once been toned, but despite the flaws it remains fresh, almost cinematic.

The last two images I will mention are both panoramas, but very different ones and from different eras. The first is a photograph by Esther Bubley of the New York Central’s yards at Weehawken, New Jersey, found on page 174. Apparently taken in the 1930s, the photo shows a busy, gritty yard beside the Hudson River as a short train departs below the highly-set camera. Taking up the upper quarter of the image, beyond the river, is the classic skyline of Manhattan, triumphantly centered on the ghostly presence of the Empire State Building. Few images so well capture the era of American industrial progress. Just looking at it gives one the urge to break out the Monopoly game board. Displaying an equally breathtaking but completely opposite scene is Joel Jensen’s black-and-white panorama of a Union Pacific steam special, found spread across pages 210 and 211. Pushed far down to the bottom of the frame is the train — the entire length of it, from it twin steam locomotives at the head end to the observation car at the rear. Hovering over the train is a sweep of exhaust, and above it all is a sky that is vast, tumultuous, and heavy with portents of rain and change.

Classic Steam puzzled me from the first glance. This is a thick volume — it is over 200 pages after all, and weighs a total of five pounds. It is, in short, a tank, with a massive amount of content stuffed into it. Between the sheer number of images and (at first) unclear organizational method, it seems to lack focus. Upon cracking it open for the first time, one wonders, is it a book on locomotives? The forward suggests not, the introduction doesn’t really clue us in either way, and the first chapter with its nebulous title is primarily a collection of locomotive pictures. While the book is more than locomotive-centric, this makes for a misleading start. Even after grasping the organizational idea, there’s still the feeling that there’s just too much there. The book would benefit from tighter organization, or less overall content, or best of all more text to provide a narrative upon which to hang this large collection of images.

It is only after considering the broad range of photographic talent within the volume that the book begins to make some sense. Classic Steam is not a comprehensive illustrated history, nor a book about the photography of steam era railroading. Instead, it is a general pictorial, in every way the spiritual successor to the many works of Beebe and Clegg, mentioned by Gruber in his introduction and included among the ranks of the photographers in the book. Like this duo, Gruber includes a wide selection of the best photographers, has a ranging taste in subjects, and happily includes his own (thoroughly deserving) photographs along side those of his contributors.

Regarding quality and finish, this is a mass market book, produced for sale at Barnes & Noble, and as such there are a number of compromises that have been made to bring the price down. Most notably, the cover stock is printed paper over board, much like a college text book. This likely will not hold up as well long-term as a cloth covered binding. The book does come with a dust jacket, printed with the same colorful design as the cover, but in true B&N fashion it will likely have a large price sticker slapped on the front, as mine did. Overall, the size of the book is massive, to the point that it feels almost too large for holding in ones lap; this truly is a coffee table book. Fortunately, the spine does allow the book to lay fairly flat, and the double-truck images thus are displayed fully and excellently.

Image reproduction is acceptable, but there are many cases where the darks of an image have become somewhat blocky and dense. Having printed black-and-white before and seen many prints in person, I suspect that there were subtle midtones and darks that were lost in the printing. That said, this is a generalist book and it is unlikely that the audience it is intended for will notice this. There are a couple of odd choices, however. Although the quality of images chosen is generally high, a few images were sourced from prints that appear to have been made in rather dusty darkrooms that were not equipped with spotting brushes. (This can perhaps be forgiven, however, considering the rarity and likely lack of negatives for some of these images.) Worse, though, is the leading image of chapter eight, a shot of an East Broad Top locomotive wreathed in steam. The color image blatantly displays heavy pixelization, as if the image were a low quality JPEG from the Internet that had only been used by mistake.

Overall, Classic Steam is one of the more comprehensive photographic anthologies of steam era railroading produced in the last half century. Unlike many consumer oriented generalist books, Gruber has assembled an “all-star” cast of photographers and content. Although the book has some flaws — mostly due to a lack of enough text “backbone” — it is a huge endeavor and when the price is considered it becomes likely the best book deal in a long long time. Although the book frustratingly lacks much in the way of an interpretive history, a photographer may find this to be the greatest bargain way of sampling some of the most meaningful railroad photographers of the mid 20th Century. In addition, those with a general interest in railroad history or those seeking a gift for a young person with a budding interest in railroads would be well advised to pick up a copy. In some ways, this successor to the tradition of Beebe and Clegg is just that, a gift to the author’s young grandson and an attempt to convey to that generation a precious experience before all traces of its memory are lost.

Classic Steam: Timeless Photographs of North American Steam Railroading is available from Barnes & Noble.

Oaks Park Pentimento: Portland’s Lost and Found Carousel Art
Photographs by Jim Lommasson. Introduction by Inara Verzemnieks. Afterword by Prudence Roberts. Oregon State University Press, 121 The Valley Library, Corvallis, OR 97331; http://oregonstate.edu/; 12.5 x 10.5 in; hardbound; 48 pages, 30 color and 9 b/w photos; $25.00

The transitory nature of art has always been fascinating. Photographs can fade, negatives can stiffen and crack and slides can succumb to color shifts and mildew. Sculptures fair little better; it has been suggested that the features on the statues of St. Mark’s Square in Venice have softened over the years, eroding away from acidic rainfall. And paintings? Even in the care of the greatest museums, many of the masters of the Renaissance onwards have developed crackled surfaces. The resulting revealed lower layers of paint are known as pentimento, but they are not confined to great canvases in the museum halls of Europe. In Oaks Park Pentimento: Portland’s Lost and Found Carousel Art, photographer Jim Lommasson explores an example of this effect on a Portland landmark, the carousel at the Oaks Park amusement park. The results, far from trivial, create a fascinating juxtaposition of Edwardian and Mid-Century cultures, as well as provide a unique encapsulation of the temporal nature of the arts.

Lommasson’s book is almost the result of an accident. During an assignment from a photography class in 1970, the photographer noted that the paintings on the central pillar of the carousel at the Oaks were peeling away, the victim of age, exposure to elements, and occasional flood waters. Lommasson only shot a single frame in black-and-white, but he returned to the Oaks over a decade later and recorded all the central panels, this time in color. It was a prescient decision: a few short years later, the panels were “restored” to their scenes of northwest scenery by a local painting club, covering over the Edwardian imagery that had been bleeding through in the pentimento.

The slim volume opens up with an introduction by journalist Inara Verzemnieks, who writes lyrically about the nature of time and art. She describes the roots of the park as a competitor to the Lewis & Clark Exposition of 1905, a place of excitement and perhaps moral danger, where young women would cozy up to young men in the darkness and be frowned upon by the local clergy for so doing. The original paintings on the carousel mimic this somewhat naive sense of adventure, with Arabian sheiks on camels, befeathered Indian chiefs, and beautiful women exhibiting a range of behaviors from stately and elegant (strolling under a parasol) to scandalous (can-can- dancing). By the 1940s, such images were dated and old fashioned, and the park had them covered over with scenic vistas of the Columbia Gorge and other northwest scenes, all far more family friendly and far more in keeping with the highway-centric provincial boosterism notions of the era. Yet, as the surface images degraded, they began to merge with the lower layers, almost as if they were interacting with each other, a process that Verzemnieks relates in a haunting way.

Following the excellent introduction, Lommasson provides a short text describing how and why he shot the images of the carousel’s central riding panels, and then come the 18 large color plates. The most striking image is perhaps that of the woman with a parasol, with the Columbia Gorge Highway circling about her legs leading to the Vista House located rather provocatively between her thighs. It is such a strange image, almost like an intentional double-exposure on film, and yet, there was no artist for these images. Yes, there were the artists who painted the original panel of the woman, and also two later artists — the eccentric Chase brothers — who painted the scene of the highway and river. But who painted this image, this amalgamation? Time, nature, God? No human hand with intent created this image. For that matter, is the art in question here the painted panels themselves, or Lommasson’s photographs? Who is the artist, and what is the art? The lines all blur here in ways that are similar to graffiti art. Everything about the panels is provocative.

The book wraps up with an afterword by art historian Prudence Roberts. Roberts tells the story of the panels, from their creation by anonymous immigrant artistis at the carousel factor in 1912 to their repainting by off-beat brothers Waldo Spore and William Corbin Chase. The Chases were painters and wood-block printers, part of the larger arts-and-crafts movement. They were also highly unconventional, living for a time in a teepee in the woods of Western Washington State. The text is accompanied by images of the park and works of the talented Chase brothers.

Overall, the book succeeds in placing the carousel panels in a much larger context of art and regional culture. The texts are rich, and the images largely thought provoking. If I had any critical comments, it would be that there is not enough. I would have welcomed more information on the chases, as well as on the original anonymous painters who created the Edwardian imagery. Then again, in the words of circus promoter P. T. Barnum, who would no doubt have felt at home at a place like the Oaks, “always leave them wanting more.”

The book is the typically shelf-awkward size that photography and art books assume, and it also feels rather slim. This makes it seem, at first glance, a bit pricey for its size. Although time spent pouring over the work ought to dismiss those concerns, it does remain slim enough that it just doesn’t feel good to hold in your lap and flip through. I always felt like the book was awkward and wanting to slip from my hands or lose its dust jacket. It is far easier to view set on a table top, and while that’s probably the recommended way to view any book of art or photography, I really like to relax in a nice chair with my books, and with Pentimento you just can’t do that. The images themselves are all crisp and the entire book is printed on a thick, high quality paper with a satin sheen to it.

Pentimento is a volume that explores history, artistic philosophy, and Pacific Northwest culture through a unique lens. It is far more than a book about an amusement park ride. It should prove valuable to those interested in the esoterica of Portland history, as well as those with a passion for documentary photography and painting in general.

Oaks Park Pentimento: Portland’s Lost and Found Carousel Art is available from Powell’s Books, Amazon, and directly from the publisher.

Vis Major: Railroad Men, an Act of God: White Death at Wellington
By Martin Burwash. iUniverse, 1663 Liberty Drive, Bloomington, IN 47403; http://www.iuniverse.com/; 9 x 6 x 1.1 in; trade paperback; 480 pages, 15 maps; $29.95

In the late Winter of 1910, the largest avalanche disaster in the history of North America struck the tiny railroad town of Wellington, Washington, perched in the Cascade Range. One hundred people died, and the tragedy remains unsurpassed to this day. The cause, according to an inquest held later that year, was determined to be “vis major”, an act of God. Afterwards, the Great Northern Railway abolished the station name of Wellington from its timetable, hoping to eliminate the memory of the disaster from the minds of passengers on the line. The story, however, lived on, becoming a source of legend about the power and danger of the high Cascades. Photographer Martin Burwash is not the first person to write about these events of 1910 — guidebooks to the region often contain thumbnail accounts of the tragedy, while more recently Gary Krist dedicated an entire volume to it — but he may be the author who comes closest to bringing a reader to understand the experience. To do this, Burwash worked within the tradition of Jeff Shaara and Patrick O’Brien, and delivered to the world his life’s work, the historical novel Vis Major.

The book starts with a brief author’s note, discussing the actual event and noting that this novel is the author’s attempt to tell the story of the men who lived through or died in the snow slide. After this short note, the novel begins. The book is organized into a series of chapters, each following one character for the duration of the chapter. Overall it is an effective device, allowing the reader to gain an understanding of the events from multiple perspectives without sacrificing the human point-of-view. The subject matter — an obscure event in the insular context of a railroad from the often forgotten past — is in great danger of being difficult to access. Burwash largely succeeds in avoiding this problem, restraining from overuse of insider technical terms as well as staying away from lengthy esoteric descriptions. Instead, the author strikes a good balance of minimal terminology and the use of context to orient the reader.

The book has a lengthy narrative pace, and this seems to be a deliberate choice made by the author. Although we get only a few key days in the Fall of 1909, once the fateful storm of 1910 strikes the mountains, we follow nearly every move made by the men, day by day, step by step. Burwash has made many public comments about his dedication to doing justice to the men who endured and in some cases lost their lives in this tragic event, and it is no doubt this historian side of the author that is manifested in this narrative choice. Much of the events of the story were pieced together through research and the records of the inquest that took place in 1910. Although the dialogue in the novel is imagined, the movement and actions of the characters are as accurate as the author was able to piece together from the records, as stated in the author’s note at the book’s beginning. The result is generally positive. While the book feels too long both figuratively and literally — it weighs over a pound and a half! — the pace of the narrative is a bit like a horse galloping, and is difficult to resist.

Although Burwash’s first novel, Vis Major shows little signs of it. The biggest weakness of the novel is likely it’s length, as mentioned above. This said, the reader never feels their time is wasted, and the overall effect is to become accustomed to the characters. There are, perhaps, a few too many instances of Burwash trying to put us in the thoughts of the characters, (invariably indicated by italics,) thus using exposition when description might have proven more effective. This said, by placing us on the shoulders of the men (and women) of Wellington, the reader gets a highly sensory ride. We get to know the isolated community of Wellington, the passengers of two stranded passenger trains, and the workers of the Great Northern Railway. Most of all, we get to experience as if firsthand the valiant, frustrating, and ultimately futile battle of the rotary snowplows and their crews as they attempt to keep Wellington connected to the outside world. When the reader finally reaches the penultimate tragedy, the hairs will very nearly stand on the back of their neck.

Following the novel, Burwash provides an epilogue discussing what became of the main survivors, and then includes a list of the GN’s men who were caught in it, noting who lived, who were injured, and who died. Given that the novel is based around a true story, the book would have benefited from a slightly longer epilogue with a bit more detail. Finally, a brief statement of acknowledgements closes out the book.

The fit and finish of Vis Major is very professional. The book is quite hefty but it feels good to hold when reading. Cover stock and paper quality feel standard for a trade paperback, and the typesetting and layout is professional. Considering that iUniverse is a print-on-demand publisher, this is far more than I would expect to see. The biggest question might be, is it worth the price? Even for such a hefty book, thirty dollars seems a bit steep. In the end, however, what you pay a premium for is not the physicality of the book, but the content. (Would Vis Major have seen print through traditional publishing houses? In these days of increasingly thin margins on published material, it is an unknown.) For me, the question was simple: it was worth an extra $5 or so to have a book with rare and interesting content and production values that felt professional. [Note: a hardbound version is also available. The paperback version was used for this review.]

Overall, Vis Major is an effective vehicle for telling the story of the Wellington disaster. Burwash’s passion for the human aspects of this story ring through in the text, in some cases making the novel feel more like creative nonfiction in the tradition of Norman Mailer or Tom Wolfe. The book will prove of interest to readers of historical fiction, as well as those interested in the Great Northern Railway, the history of the North Cascades, or the futility of attempting to fight nature.

Vis Major: Railroad Men, an Act of God: White Death at Wellington is available from Amazon. [The hardbound version is available here.]

Wild Beauty: Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, 1867-1957
By Terry Toedtemeier and John Laursen, Eds. Oregon State University Press, 121 The Valley Library, Corvallis, OR 97331; http://oregonstate.edu/dept/press/; 12.4 x 12 x 1.5 in; hardbound; 360 pages, 9 color, 9 hand-tinted, and 116 b/w photos, 2 maps; $75.00

One of the last things the world likely needs is a photo book on the Columbia River Gorge. This scenic area, with its numerous waterfalls, mountains, scenic vistas, and easy freeway access is probably the most over-photographed region of the Pacific Northwest. One might be pressed to say that there is nothing new left to see. And you’d be right — but there is a lot left to see that is old, as is proved by the release of Wild Beauty: Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, 1867-1957.

Wild Beauty places the history of photography in the Gorge at the forefront. The compilers have chosen the period of 1867 to 1957 as their focus, the latter being the date when The Dalles Dam flooded Celilo Falls. The book opens with a broad essay on the river’s geological and anthropological history, and the subsequent attempts to use tools of the “industrial revolution” such a photography to record those things. It’s a good overview of what the book hopes to illustrate, if a bit over-familiar to the Pacific Northwest reader. The most valuable segment of this text is contained in its last two pages, where we meet some of the Gorge’s earliest photographers, such as Joseph Bucthel and Carleton Watkins.

While Buchtel’s work is considered to be “unimpressive”, Watkins’ work is the entirety of the first of five sections of plates in the book. It’s a wise and fitting choice, as Watkins is a skilled artist, a man who had cut his teeth making the photographs of Yosemite that would convince Congress to save it as the first national park. It is a miracle that as many prints as shown in the book even exist; the authors point out that many of his glass plate negatives were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Watkins brings his skills to bear on the Columbia Gorge, making images at a time of great transition. Sure, the book’s title suggests an emphasis on natural beauty, yet what we see even in these, the earliest photographs of the work is the firm hand of man, altering the landscape. While some of the images will prove familiar, but as local historian Dan Haneckow pointed out to me, others are more obscure or bear re-examination. A prime example of this is Plate 6, a moderately familiar image of one of the old portage railroads during the 1860s. Look closely at the back, however, and you discover a flatcar carrying a Conestoga wagon as used on the Oregon Trail. Was this a late part of the great migration, taking advantage of a more modern alternative to risking the rapids or taking the long and rough Barlow Road? If so, it’s a rare glimpse indeed.

Watkins brings us these gems of zeitgeist, but he is not simply a documentary man. Many of his images have a sensitivity and an artistic composition that makes them excellent even today. Their sharpness, their haunting familiarity makes them seem recent rather than distant. This is but the first of many times a reader will find themselves staring into the distant past and yet feeling intimate with it, as if what has changed, great as the changes have been, is less than what is the same.

The next section deals with the images of various local commercial photographers who followed in Watkins’ footsteps. The subject matter these photographers chose to shoot tended to concentrate on the more intimate scale of the Gorge, and here we see some of the first images of the native population. It is here where we first glimpse Celilo as a force of nature, rather than an impediment to trade. There are surprises here too, like the great sand dunes that used to lurk on the east side of The Dalles, or vast seas of Canadian ice. A few hand-tinted images pop through, but primarily we are still given monochromes of various tints.

Section three concentrates on the rise of a new phenomenon: the amateur. Thanks to the advances of technology, photography by the turn of the twentieth century was becoming almost common. For the first time it was now possible for someone who was not a professional (or a very very eccentric amateur) to make photographs. Most notably, the two amateurs that the compilers show us are different in yet another way: they are Lily White and Sarah Ladd, women. Professionals had been an all male bastion, but the amateur photography movement gave women something more meaningful to do other than paint china plates or embroider. Yet White & Ladd were not just random photographers in the wilds; they were connected enough in the growing intellectual photography circles that they were members of Alfred Stieglitz’s inner circle. Their images are peculiarly timeless, feeling not far removed from images made in our own time. The cause is uncertain — perhaps it is a certain sharpness and a scope that is not nearly so sweeping as the earlier panorama-mania. Perhaps, too, we see here the first technically proficient pedestrian imagery of the Gorge, the great-grandmother of every amateur’s weekend snapshots.

Section four deals with perhaps one of the most familiar aspects of Gorge photography, the tourism oriented image. These photographs were made primarily by commercial photographers for the railroads and the highway promoters. Here are the photographic legends of the area, including the iconic views of waterfalls, scenic highway viaducts, and the view from Crown Point. It is during this time that the modern scenic Columbia River Gorge — thanks largely to the photographers who promoted it — acquires its classic identity. No longer is the region a somewhat frightening place, a place of hardship and travail, but instead it is a playground, a quick drive from your suburban bungalow at a bracing 35 miles-per-hour in your Model T. Many of the images are further “gilded” through garish hand coloring.

If such boosterism seems to cheapen the river, the next and final section of the book is the most tragic of all. Titled “The Engineered River”, this segment delivers to us in stunning visual images the return of the river to a cruder understanding. The water now is no more than an unharnessed power source, something to be exploited for human advancement. In some ways, however, the images we see here of dynamiting channels, the construction of great concrete dams, and the burial of cultural treasures has more in common with than different from each of the previous understandings of the Gorge; each saw it as a resource to be utilized, whether for transportation, tourism dollars, or energy. From a photographic standpoint, this chapter contains two new developments, the first being the use of true color imagery. The second and perhaps more complex development is the aerial photograph, further detaching the viewer from reality on the ground. It is perhaps appropriate for a time when men tried to drastically alter the river that their point-of-view f choice was from the height of a God’s eye view.

The book closes with little further commentary. A brief (one page) epilogue is included, and following this are plate listings (but without thumbnails), notes, and acknowledgments. The latter is lengthy: many of the images scene in the book are from private collectors and have never been seen in public or print before.

Visually, the content of this book is exceptionally good. There are many remarkable plates and they are presented in a logical order that makes their context more evident, both as indicators of how the Columbia Gorge was framed and viewed, as well as how landscape photography developed and grew. That said, the book is not without faults. The introduction, although able, is dry and does not give much of a feel for the flavor of the Gorge; an essay by a writer of regional or topical relevance would have been most welcome. This is even more the case for the epilogue, which felt far too short and left me wanting more.

Fit and finish on the book is excellent. Some other reviews have noted missing pages or other assembly problems; this reviewer’s copy had no such defects. This book is hefty — you could use it as a weapon if needed. It is perhaps as large as was practical to make it, but sometimes you do wish it could have been bigger, for yet more detail in the images. That said, image reproduction is high quality.

I’m tempted to simply give this book an outright recommendation and say to you “you must buy it”. However, as I alluded to in the beginning of this review, I have qualms about yet another photography book on the Columbia River Gorge. Does the world need another? More importantly, do you need this one? It is against this skepticism that I come out with the answer, yes, you do. If you are a follower of regional landscape photography, then this book, more than any other, is essential to understanding the nature of the medium. The book has the right balance of historical overview, context, and precious images. If you want a discount coffee table book to send your distant relatives, so they can understand where you live, this is not your book. Rather, Wild Beauty is a chronicle of the inter-relationship between photography and the Columbia Gorge, and thus a must-have for the bookshelf of any serious regional landscape photographer, or followers of the same.

Wild Beauty: Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, 1867-1957. is available from Powells, Amazon as well as directly from the publisher.

From The Addendum @ route99west.com | © Alexander B. Craghead

Beauty of the City: A. E. Doyle, Portland’s Architect
By Phillip Niles. Oregon State University Press, 121 The Valley Library, Corvallis, OR 97331-4501; http://oregonstate.edu/dept/press; 7 x 10 in; trade paperback; 296 pages, 72 b/w photos, 23 illustrations, 1 map; $29.95

Portland has seen numerous shining towers rise in the past half-century. Beginning with Pietro Belluschi’s stylish and ground-breaking Equitable (now Commonwealth) Building of 1948, it seems the architecture of the city’s core has been written in steel and glass. And yet, for anyone who admires this city — whether they be a kindly visitor or a passionate lover — it is not these buildings that define it. True, they soar. Many are remarkable. Yet the vernacular alphabet of the city is made of richer things, of shining white tiles, cornices high in the breeze, and patterns of warm, handsome brick. The buildings date to the early twentieth century, when Portland was both at both the height and the end of its reign as the most important city of the region. In Phillip Niles’ book, Beauty of the City: A. E. Doyle, Portland’s Architect, we follow the life and career of one of the most important architects of that era. As Niles himself says, “he did more for Portland as it is today than any other architect before or since.”

Niles’ book gives us a full biography of Doyle, from his roots as the son of a working-class builder to his rise as one of the most important architects of Portland. Doyle’s career begins in the halls of the architects Whidden & Lewis, whose surviving buildings in the city most notably include CIty Hall. Here, young Doyle learned his trade through practical experience, ranging from drafting work to being the firm’s go-for boy. Doyle was often sent to find particular builders for his employer, which in those days consisted of running from saloon to saloon until the desired contractor was located. Although architects were enjoying good business from the empire builders of the region’s business and social elites, it was still more craft or trade than a profession, and Portland, for all its striving and grasping still had quite a rough edge to it.

With rather improvised and gritty roots, both Portland and Doyle “grew up together”, as Niles puts it. Doyle quickly rose to become the primary architect in the city. Major landmarks of modern Portland — such as the Meier & Frank Building or the Galleria or the Benson Hotel or the American Bank Building — all were designed and built over the course of the first quarter of the century. Just as Portland was rapidly acquiring its gracious downtown, so too was architecture acquiring its professional veneer. Trained as an office boy, by the time that Doyle’s career was winding down at mid-century he was frequently and inaccurately described (in his own lifetime!) as having received a degree in architecture at Columbia University. It is telling that towards the end of his life he did little to correct this misunderstanding, and in some cases actually helped to give it life.

Niles’ biography of Doyle is more than a basic who-what-where formula. Contained in the narrative are many gems of the history of the city. One of the more amusing pictures that Niles paints relates to one o the first typists in Portland, whose talent was so exciting and new that she used to have an audience, noses pressed t the glass outside her window.

The biographies of professionals such as architects often stand in great danger of being dry, yet Niles manages to avoid this pitfall for the most part. We are often given generous portions of context on the world about Doyle at any given time, and indeed the book is entertaining reading for this fact alone. The writing is clear and readable, although I sometimes feel that Niles has spent too much time on some aspects of Doyle’s life. As an example, his two trips to Europe feel overly long. Although a more than enjoyable read, I also feel a lack of any personality from Doyle: at no point does it feel like Niles “gets under the skin” of the architect. I freely admit, however, that this is too much to ask given the nature of the author’s sources and the span of time between the book and Doyle’s lifetime.

The book is softcover with inexpensive paper and straightforward production values, nesting within a slick and attractive cover. It feels nice to hold and thumb through, with just the right weight to make a long-term read flow. Supporting the text are numerous photos, primarily of buildings that Doyle designed. While these provide necessary additional information, they are rather small and basic in nature and I would have preferred more and larger images.

Overall, Beauty of the City provides an entertaining and valuable record of the development of some of the most visually important structures of downtown Portland. In addition, its early chapters give a good feel for the Edwardian era city. Anyone interested in the regions architecture or in the development of Portland’s downtown would find this book an enjoyable and valuable addition to their library.

Beauty of the City: A. E. Doyle, Portland’s Architect is available from Powell’s, Amazon as well as directly from the publisher.

From The Addendum @ route99west.com | © Alexander B. Craghead

Approaching Nowhere
Photography by Jeff Brouws with essays by William L. Fox and Jeff Brouws. W.W. Norton, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110; http://www.wwnorton.com/; 12.3 x 11.6 x 0.8 in; hardbound; 160 pages, 112 color photos, 1 illustration; $50.00

It is one of the fundamental facts of the 20th century that Americans came to live in their cars. Thanks to cheap gas, a government subsidized highway system, and what seemed like growth without natural limits, the roadside became the face of “modern” America. Much of this has become part of the country’s romantic self-image. Big finned steel behemoths cruising small downtowns; throaty muscle cars roaring down stretches of two-lane tarmac in the boonies; drive through everything, from restaurants to coffee stands to banks to liquor stores. As the century ended, however, some of the gloss came off. Car culture always looked ahead, and thus never cared what it left behind it: neglected city centers, unwalkable suburbs, abandoned mom-and-pop retailers, and a cheap attitude of disposable mediocrity. In Approaching Nowhere (published by W. W. Norton in 2006), photographer Jeff Brouws turns his camera on this detritus, and shows us a lonely, haunting, melancholy world.

The book is first and foremost a photographer’s monograph. All the images are Brouws’, and tellingly at he end of the volume is a curriculum vitae — one wonders if this isn’t jumping the gun considering that Brouws is still very much alive and producing. The photos take up the over-whelming majority of the book, and are divided into three sections. The first, titled “The Highway Landscape”, primarily consists of images of roadside America. This section contains the bulk of the photographs in the book. The second is titled “The Franchised Landscape”, and concentrates on the corporatized strip-mall and drive through landscape. Lastly is “The Discarded Landscape”, concentrating primarily on urban decay. Following the photo sections are two essays, the first by noted writer William L. Fox, and the second by Brouws himself. Both Fox and Brouws write about the American landscape and how the development of “freeway culture” has effected it. Brouws includes a page of footnotes for his essay, and then the aforementioned c.v. and some acknowledgements.

With no preamble, introduction, or preface, the book launches right from the title pages and into the images. One of the most haunting for me is one of the first, Plate 11, Exit 66 off I-80, near Little America, Wyoming, 1995. To the left is a lonely and empty stretch of freeway, dimly lit by alien sodium-vapor streetlights in their sickly metallic orange pall. Above them glow green US-DOT highway signs, while in the distance beyond is a murky, snow-covered landscape of nothingness. It is the blue hour, after twilight, and the sky still glows faintly. The scene is bleak, remote, empty, and yet there is something majestic about it.

This brings up a troubling point. Skimming through the book, or skipping ahead to the essays, (which appear at the back, after one has been deluged in the imagery,) it becomes clear that this work is a critical one in nature. Brouws seems to be holding up to us a mirror, showing us the world we have made for ourselves. A theme of vacancy runs throughout. Many photographers try and find the scenes that make a location unique, the sense of place, but Brouws has done the opposite, photographing the things that make every American place the same. Yet critical tone or not, some images — like Plate 11 — are in spite of this moving and beautiful. Not for the first time this brings up the conundrum: how can an artist can apply arts meant to bring visual harmony and pleasure — composition — to a scene in which he or she finds folly? That Brouws shows us beauty as well as folly is either a signal that he also has been unable to reconcile this contradiction, or that he finds beauty even in the things that trouble him.

One thing that stands out in this body of work is the lack of people. Not for the first time, Brouws has shown an Hopperesque aversion to the human form. Of the over 100 images in the volume, only eight show signs of humanity in the frame. While Brouws clearly has a point he is trying to convey, is this fair? Sure, all art is biased, but I wonder if the work is slighting the landscape just a little bit by skin-flintingly erasing the human form from it. Who amongst us could love a world unpeopled? We see empty diners, empty sidewalks, empty streets. It should be no wonder that we find the scenes soulless and a little bit scary: we’re facing them alone.

The Hopper influence is especially strong with plates 127 and 137, the former of which much resembles Early Sunday Morning, and the latter of which seems to be recalling Approaching a City.

From the more technical side, Brouws likes to clip things off a lot. We see signs, cars, and (more rarely) body parts all clipped off and extended beyond the frame. He seems less interested in the place than the spaces between, often taking images of the voids than the forms that frame them. Most of the plates are richly colored, and when they aren’t, they are full of vast tonal ranges of subtle colors; although I am a big fan of black-and-white imagery, I can’t imagine any of these frames in monochrome. There’s a film noir influence too, with lots of murky, moody night images, with the edges of the picture disappearing into shadow and black.

The overriding sensation of the images in Approaching Nowhere is a sense of void, of nothingness. The decay and the bleakness has a certain beauty at times, but little of it is memorable. Even the most striking images — the night scenes — are forgotten once the book is closed. In their place is a sensation, rather than a visual, that sticks in the mind. It’s a kind of numbness. It is only then that it becomes evident: there is no single image that sums up Brouws’ work in Approaching Nowhere, because there is no single portrait of a place within the book. Rather, the entire book is one single portrait of a nowhere-land — the “nowhere” of the title.

The first of two essays in the back of the book is penned by William L. Fox. Fox gives us a brief and informative overview of the cultural geography of the book, as well as the photographic history of recording such landscapes.

Fox’s essay is followed by a longer one written by Brouws himself. Brouws writes with a knowledge and take on the landscape that places him more into the realm of social critic or urban planner pundit than photographer. He says little or nothing about the image making process, and a lot about his motives or vision. His essay is erudite and moving, although he occasionally slips too far into academia: Brouws may be one of the few writers I know to use the word “simulacrum” in a work meant for general readers. (It means, essentially, a front or a visual fake).

I can’t help but compare what Brouws writes here with David Plowden’s comments about his photography, and his awe of great machines or great bridges. With Brouws, however, there is little inspiration, little awe and wonder. Instead there is a drive to document a bitter reality. I am reminded, however, of Plowden’s reasons for quitting photography, his statement that the world he photographed is no longer there, and that this broke his heart. Perhaps Brouws’ bitter determination is but a reflection of this world.

The book is large and square format, so it will be a real pain to fit it on any normal bookshelf. It’s also just a tad uncomfortable to hold and flip through, making it more of a table book; this is disappointing, because my first instinct with these lonely images is to sit back and thimb through them in my lap, intimately. The upside of the size, however, is that you can truly get lost in the images, which for the most part are well reproduced. I do feel that some of the more subtle plates have a muddy look to them on closer inspection, but this is not to the point that it ruins the experience.

While I can’t state that the volume is a definitive portrait of America at the Millennium, it is without doubt a significant building block of work in the same vein as the photography of Robert Adams or even some of David Plowden’s grittier images, and a huge leap forward from Brouws’ previous books. Anyone who is serious about photographing the American landscape would be strongly advised to become familiar with this book.

Approaching Nowhere is available from Amazon as well as Powell’s Books.

From The Addendum @ route99west.com | © Alexander B. Craghead

The Call of Trains: Railroad Photographs by Jim Shaughnessy
Photographs by Jim Shaughnessy with text by Jeff Brouws. W. W. Norton, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110; http://www.wwnorton.com/; 12.1 x 10.9 x 1 in; hardbound; 224 pages, 323 duotone b/w photos, 1 illustration; $65.00

Sequels are always challenging projects to undertake. 2004 saw Jeff Brouws, erudite photography scholar and a photographer in his own right, bring us the definitive volume on the definitive railroad photographer, Richard Steinheimer. Brouws gave us a view of “Stein” through an academic’s lens; the result was a book that redefined railroad photography. Now in 2008, Brouws has brought us a new book in the same format and with the same approach: The Call of Trains: Railroad Photographs by Jim Shaughnessy. The question is, does it work this time?

The natural pace of sequels inevitably sets up comparisons between this book and the previous book on “Stein”. This may or may not be fair to Shaughnessy, as it seems to beg the question of “is Shaughnessy as good as Stein”? The comparison may be further heightened by the broad similarity between the titles as well: one wonders if Brouws could have found a title that didn’t mimic that of the Stein book.

A better question may be, is Shaughnessy’s work worth the same level of intellectual exploration as Steinheimer? Brouws certainly thinks so. He gives us a rather long essay (22 pages) about Shaughnessy, revealing to us his origins and vignettes of his development as a railroad photographer. Brouws attempts to take this further, with numerous side trips into the broader world of railroad photography. At one point, for example, he debates whether photographers such as Robert Frank or Walker Evans influenced railroad photography, but then notes that Shaughnessy was not influenced by them. Brouws also takes an extended textual detour to describe the “Milwaukee School”, a term he has coined to describe the prevailing 20th century railroad photography style as popularized by the iconic TRAINS Magazine. Yet even here the feeling is that of trying too hard: can one really lump photojournalists like Ted Benson and Richard Steinheimmer into the same stylistic camp as traditionalists such as Phil Hastings or gimmick-artists like O. Winston Link? The result is an introduction that feels overly long and unfocused, as if Brouws wanted to write a piece on the development of railroad photography itself, rather than a coherent narrative about Shaughnessy.

Following the introduction comes the bulk of the book, the photographs themselves. Most of the photographs are printed one to a page with white margins, and in fact only one image is printed full bleed. Unlike Brouws’ previous work on Steinheimer, all the plates are displayed against a white page. Few images are shown double truck, with a significant handful being presented across the gutter of the book and partway onto a second, mostly white page. Overall, most of the images laying across the gutter survive the experience.

The images that Brouws has selected greatly support portions of his “Milwaukee School” thesis from the introduction, being on average more conventional in nature and focusing more on documenting things and places over experiences. It is as if Brouws is holding up Shaugnessy as a pinnacle example of what was the mainstream railroad photography style of the 20th century. The book is also distinctively of its region: has Shaughnessy’s style absorbed what it means to be in New England and upstate New York, or do those of us who call ourselves railroad photographers simply associate the region so much with his photos that the two are no longer separable?

The most memorable photographs in The Call of Trains are the images containing the people who lived with and made the railroads. An elderly station agent, his head as “old and weary” as his employer, the New York, Ontario and Western. A Nickel Plate Road man, about to hoop up orders to an oncoming train. A Boston and Maine laborer washing the windows of a classic streamlined diesel locomotive in the mid-fifties. Best of all of these, perhaps, is Plate 16, an image taken in 1961 in Watervliet, New York. It is dark, and a switchman of the Delware and Hudson Railroad, electric lantern in one hand, is throwing a switch in a yard, his body lit up presumably by the headlights of his train. It is crisp, and one can almost feel the chill misty air; it is a scene of everyday railroading that is as real today as it was when it was shot. Interestingly, Lucius Beebe was so attracted to the image that he used it on a book about the SP, intentionally misidentifying the railroad and location of the shot.

Interspersed with these human-centered photos are bucolic panoramas, gritty scenes of fading New England industry, and dramatic night scenes. Strangely, though, I find that one of the least typical images of the collection is the finest, Plate 64. The photograph is uncharacteristically stark for a Shaughnessy piece, with a plain sky, minimal scenery, and an empty foreground. We look straight on the side of a train, a single diesel locomotive hauling a single car down the track in late 1980s rural New York state. Little traffic, no people visible, no industry or life; if plate 16 had a timeless quality to it, plate 64 was one of the few images I have ever seen to have captured so well how much the railroad world had changed.

Following the plates, we are treated to a two page essay by the photographer himself. Shaughnessy recounts for us a series of memories, including an intriguing one of assembling a story on a day in a life of a hostler on the D&H in 1957 that strangely was never published, and an amusing anecdote about a railfan tradition, fun with rental cars. The stories are charming, and if any fault could be had with them, it’s that there aren’t enough of them. After Shaughnessy’s too-brief afterward comes a series of extended captions for each of the plates in the book, and the final plate, plate 143.

Overall, the book that Brouws gives us is a valuable insight into a photographer who arguably represents the best of mainstream railroad photography from the last century. Although The Call of Trains could be faulted for over-ambition, the quality of both the content and the reproduction makes the book a standout. Anyone who is interested in the progress of railroad photography or who has an interest in the railroads of the New England region would be well served to purchase this book.

The Call of Trains: Railroad Photographs by Jim Shaughnessy will be released in November 2008, and will be available for purchase from Powell’s Books as well as from Amazon.com.

From The Addendum @ route99west.com | © Alexander B. Craghead

Here There Nowhere
Paintings by Michael Brophy with essays by Jonathan Raban and William L. Lang. OSU Press, 121 The Valley Library, Corvallis, OR 97331-4501; http://oregonstate.edu/dept/press; 12.0 x 12.0 x 0.25 in; paperbound; 60 pages, 20 color images; $25.00

The landscape of the Pacific Northwest is an ever-changing one, and so it should be no surprise that artistic views on that landscape have also changed radically over time. By the close of the last century, Oregon, once labelled the “Pacific Wonderland” on the state’s automobile license plates, had become a battlefield of ideas and ideals. Portland artist Michael Brophy has been trying to capture that essence of division and change over his career as a painter, with his most recent expression taking place in a series of large canvases all painted in 2007. Brophy calls this series Here There Nowhere, and it is the subject of a recent book by the same name produced by Oregon State University Press.

The beginning of the book form of Here There Nowhere is heralded with an essay about the history of landscape painting in the Pacific Northwest, written by Jonathan Raban. The essay, titled Battleground of the Eye, may seem familiar to readers; it was adapted from the introduction Raban wrote for 2001’s The Pacific Northwest Landscape: A Painted History, printed by Sasquatch Books. Although this is not new material, it helps to ground the painting series into the wider context of the artistic representation of the landscape of the Pacific Northwest. The only error I noted was that the Northern Pacific that entered Tacoma in 1883 was not the creation of the legendary James J. Hill, but of industrialist Henry Villard; a minor esoteric quibble perhaps, but it would not have taken much to fact check the essay one more time.

Following Raban’s essay come the paintings themselves. Brophy delivers us images on a heroic scale, reminiscent of revolutionary art from South America or Russia during the last century. These are grand canvases with grand ideas. And yet, the content chosen to express those ideas is inherently anti-heroic, mundane, dull. Brophy likes repeating patterns and vast expanses of subtleties over the boldness of an up-front statement. It doesn’t look like he’s trying to be pretty. Darkened fields, broad skies, blank cliff faces; they are all empty landscapes, and rarely is a human figure seen.

Michael Brophy, Crack of Dawn. 2007, oil on canvas, 74 by 80 inches.
Image courtesy Laura Russo Gallery.

It is perhaps the night images that stand out the most. Night Truck and Meadow both are evocative. The strongest of these is perhaps Crack of Dawn, a canvas with a deep wet cloud cover and a thin strip of dawn that any local will immediately recognize as the aggregate of countless mornings. Here we see how subtlety and muted color choices are key to understanding Brophy’s take on the landscape. Not all the night images work in the book, however: Full Dark is a study in subtleties that sadly does not translate well to print at all.

There is also an odd disjointed feel to the series. Some of the images have a dark, painterly, brooding approach, like Blowdown or Aftermath; the palette of the former reminds me of something from Carl Hall. On the flipside are strong traditionalist images such as Ruin, which feels sentimental in nature, or Day, with a painterly realism of something very tangible, in this case the rear of a semi-tractor driving some two-lane road to nowhere in the vast inland Pacific Northwest.

Michael Brophy, Ruin. 2007, oil on canvas, 74 by 80 inches.
Image courtesy Laura Russo Gallery.

If anything rescues the disjointedness, it is a common theme of nearly cinematic ideas; every time I flip through the images of the series I start feeling like I am looking at a storyboard for a movie about life in the forgotten flyover corners of the much over-hyped PNW paradise. What is amazing is that Brophy offers us a social commentary, a critique even, of how we view the world, and yet he does not choose the traditional route of painting scarred industrial landscapes or denuded forests or the like. Instead, he simply shows us that this is how we usually view the world, through mundane eyes that see only the same boring monotony. In a way, his critique runs deeper than the typical environmental or social commentary, pointing that the problem isn’t the clear-cut or the junk-pile, but instead it is our viewpoint. It is internal, it is within us.

Reproduction and presentation get fair marks. Brophy’s paintings are all very large works, standing at 74 by 80 inches. To stand before one is to be dwarfed, even for a tall person, and any attempt to depict this series with any justice on paper must be admired for audacity if nothing else. I don’t quite think that the publisher managed to pull this off; one square foot just can’t give you the sense of scale that standing before the real thing can. Further, I feel that some of the subtlety of the originals has been lost in the reproduction.

Following the images comes an essay by William L. Lang. Lang brings us back to the subject rather than the medium, concentrating not on Brophy’s paintings so much as on the story they are a part of. He ably discusses the relationship of humanity to the land of the region, with occasional examples pulled from Brophy’s work. Although a short and interesting read, I feel that Lang’s comments are in some ways duplicative of Raban’s text, while at the same time weaker and not relying enough on how an artist such as Brophy sees this world. What I wish had been included was a short piece by the artist himself, but such is not included in the book.

Overall, Here There Nowhere is a slim but important volume that highlights how landscape painting in the Pacific Northwest is evolving. For artists or students of art in the region, it would make a valuable addition to the bookshelf.

Here There Everywhere is available from Powell’s or Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher. Thanks to Laura Russo Gallery for supplying images and other assistance with this review.

From The Addendum @ route99west.com | © Alexander B. Craghead

David Plowden: Vanishing Point: Fifty Years of Photography
By David Plowden, forward by Richard Snow, introduction by Steve Edwards. W. W. Norton & Company, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110; http://www.wwnorton.com/; 11.3 x 12.5 in; hardbound; 340 pages, 237 b/w photos; $100.00

A trip to the photography section of a well-stocked bookstore will yield shelves full of photographer’s monographs. Countless spines arrest the eyes, each one vying to be the stylish work that convinces you that this photographer is the American Master.

And then there is David Plowden.

Plowden is one of the few living links between today and the greats of documentarian photography, the geniuses of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and others who participated in the Farm Services Administration’s photography project during the Great Depression. Their work, seminal to the documentary style, was paradoxically emotive, evoking a minimalistic visual poetry. Plowden — who struck up a friendship with Evans in the late ’50s — built upon this tradition, mixing a lyric style of photography with a documentary sensibility.

Over the course of his career, Plowden has published numerous books, almost always organized along topical lines: great lakes steam boats, great bridges of North America, vanishing small towns. He also has a fascination for railroads, the first love on which he lavished his camera — indeed his first published photo was in TRAINS Magazine in 1954. This love expanded to encompass all manner of industrial subjects, from steamships and tugboats to steel mills and grain elevators. Now 76 years old, Plowden is at the end of his career, and it seems natural that he would publish a retrospective volume of his photography. Vanishing Point is that work.

The book opens — after two images and a table of contents– with a forward by Richard Snow, formerly the editor of American Heritage. Here Snow ably pens a brief discussion of Plowden’s career. The brush strokes are light, and those familiar with Plowden’s work might criticize it as being repetitive or unnecessary, but it provides a valuable taste of the text and photos to follow, almost as if it were a kind of abstract of the remaining book. A gentle start: so far, so good.

All this changes changes with the turn of the page and a remarkable 14-page introductory essay by Steve Edwards. Edwards brings his journalist sensibilities to the fore as he spins the story of the life and career of David Plowden. In so many ways, the story the journalist tells seems almost cinematic: a troubled childhood in New England, a youth amongst railroad men, a struggle to study a discipline he hated (economics) at Yale in hopes of making himself a better railroad employee following graduation. The reader is treated to the full transit of the photographer’s disillusionment with the railroad world and with more common paths of life that would eventually bring him to photography. And here he works for Winston Link, studies under Minor White, and becomes fast friends with Walker Evans.

Edward’s portrait is deftly penned with a light touch and a sensitivity to emotions and motives that makes the reader feel they can get inside — if only for a brief moment — the heart and mind of the photographer. He is sympathetic, but candid too; Plowden’s single-minded devotion to his art often came at the expense of a relationship with his children and eventually cost him his first marriage. The event is part of a repeating pattern of loss that seems endemic to Plowden’s drive. Edwards relates a point in 1960, after Plowden had left the studio of Minor White, feeling he had made a great mistake to study photography. The scene is rural Maine, and the photographer is standing the the cab of a steam locomotive on the very last steam-powered run on the line.

“‘While that engine died, I sat in the cab in Brownsville Junction and watched the gauge drop to zero,’ [Plowden] says. The loss was palpable; the very thing that had provided so much joy and escape during his troubled childhood had vanished.”

In the space of a few short sentences, Edwards gets to the burning core of Plowden’s modus operandi.

After this come the photographs themselves. Plowden was once scoffed at for being a “topical” photographer; here he wears this on his sleeve, dividing the book into seven thematic chapters of plates. Each is designated by only a roman numeral, with no title, no explanatory text, no attempt at interpretation. It is only the chapter divider, the plates, and in tiny text at the bottom, a plate number and very cursory caption.

Although railroads were Plowden’s first love, they are not the focus of the work, and indeed the images of railroads he presents here are not the strongest images in the book. The most amusing thing about these images is the first plate, a photo of a Great Northern steam-powered freight near Wilmar, Minnesota: it violates nearly every rule of railroad photography convention, with no light on the nose of the locomotive, a broad foreground space of snow and haphazard weeds, and a line of poles and wires directly in front of the engine!

In addition to the train-centric images are more domestic moments, with the engines getting washed, maintained, and fueled by engine terminal crews. These images display a cinematic quality that is similar to Link, and indeed many of the plates date from 1959-1960, around the time of Plowden’s association with that famous photographic dramatist. There is, however, one key element that is notably different; while Link resorted to everything short of building a personal hydrogen-powered sun to light his subjects with Hitchcockian precision, Plowden has worked only with available light. The result? His images seem fresher and more natural than Link’s, as if the events in them had taken place but a few days ago, rather than decades hence.

Far more stunning than the railroad plates are the nautical images, such as plate 31, “Tugboat Julia C. Moran Undocking Liner, Hudson River, New York City (1975)”. We are on the forward deck of a Hudson tug, barely seeing more than a few inches of the con. Out forward is a single man — one of the few humans that Plowden has included in his Hopperesque de-peopled world — unwrapping one of the ropes that holds the liner to the tug. And behind hims soars the great silver rivet-speckled bow of the hull of an ocean liner, so massive that her decks and superstructure are lost somewhere in an Olympian height beyond the view of the camera.

Bridges are, of course, one of David Plowden’s greatest loves, and with boyish glee he gives us great hulking massive flying piles of steel. My favorite is probably one of the closest to me, an image of Newport, Oregon’s Yaquina Bay Bridge shown in plate 61. The photo looks down the empty length of the span, and flanked between two gothic concrete spires curves the steel arch of the main bridge. The top nearly disappears into coastal fog, and the far end is barely even there at all. Beyond, there is no world, no ocean, no hills.

Next comes a chapter on industrial subjects, lead by a large set of photographs of the steel making process. Giant metal buckets, glowing molten steel, flashing dancing sparks. After a tour of this mechanical Hades, Plowden takes us on a journey through a litany of “back end” jobs, a hidden world of industry and commerce that few get to see. We see the great ore docks. We meet the solitary men who work in the bellies of steamships. We walk among lunar piles of coal and of iron ore. We get lost amongst the clinical inhumanity of a nuclear power plant.

The fifth chapter could be best described as wastelands. The images here are perhaps the most complex and most postmodern of the book. This America is one that is decaying, where every house hasn’t been painted since FDR was president and each car looks like only Richard Roundtree would want to drive it, if it were still 1975 anyway. The bleakness, the desolation, the emptiness here is almost disturbing. Every now and then, I catch a sensation that reminds me of the empty highway-spaces of Jeff Brouws. There is a vague notion of social commentary emerging here, especially in the few plates here that show people; what is the future of the freckle-faced boy from rural West Virginia in plate 132? What kind of life awaits the girl staring out the window in plate 136? The state of paint and repair of her Pennsylvania home doesn’t give much hope of stewardship for the world she is about to inherit. And in plate 143, shot in 1967, even the iconic form of the Statue of Liberty is framed by power poles and trash.

Love re-enters the picture in chapter six. Here is rural America, and rural Americana: the small town main street, the general store, the hardware store. This is the world that is fast fleeting, a victim of a rural populace mystified at the decline of tradition and Main Street while they push their shopping carts down the aisles of Wal-Mart. The shop-keepers — when they appear at all — are old, their faces as cracked as the paint of their wooden floorboards. And now and then we get children, too, and an old couple in Iowa who keep a clapboard house with Swiss net curtains, and we get the silence of over-furnished empty front parlors from houses that were built when people knew what the heck the word “parlor” even meant.

Storm clouds on the plains of New Mexico opens up the seventh and final chapter of Vanishing Point. It is the same image that is used on the dust jacket, a powerful, sweeping metaphor for the elegy that is the remainder of the book. From here out, there will be no more people, not a single solitary one. Indeed the only identifiable living creature is a single horse — pale like that ridden by Death in the Four Horseman of the Book of Revelations. It stares out at us kindly from a single small square window in the side of a barn in plate 221. We are alone now, in the plains, navigating by grain elevators. We walk freely amongst barns and inside of feed mills. It seems that dust still hangs in the air, as if someone was just here, just working, but where have they gone? There is a profound solemnity, as if in church, and each successive image shows us less and tells us more.

The final image — plate 235 — returns us back to where we and Plowden both began. It is a railroad track. Frost once wrote of two roads that diverged in a wood, one well taken, and one rarely so. Plowden, like the poet, took the one “less travelled by”. Here, though, we see the mainline — the path well worn — and the diverging route merging towards a switch that unites them. Are we looking backwards from the diverging route of Plowden’s life, to see what has gone now collectively behind us? Or are we looking ahead, and seeing that even the route less taken eventually winds to the same common end? Take care and note: there are no buildings. There are no people. There is not even a train. There is only a track that crests over a small rise and disappears, and beyond that, empty hills bearing no promises. It is an evocative image on which to end the collection of photographic plates, especially considering that the book is meant as a retrospective of an entire career.

The closing text of the work is from Plowden himself, and his voice crackles with energy. Here he is full of humor and wit, buoyant in a way that is natural to those who have such a keen sense of loss and of the fleeting nature of time. Here we are imbued in a world of technical geekdom but told in such a loving fashion that, like the sometimes nonsensical phrasing of a T.S. Elliot poem, the reader is enthralled. He tells a hilarious narrative of his bad luck in camera choices, contraptions that seemed bent on being too bulky, too complicated, or too delicate to stand up to the demands he would place on them. The notes read like a letter from a favorite grandfather that you rarely see. It is perhaps the most valuable text in the book, and as precious as any of the photographic plates bound within the book’s pages.

This is a heavy book, weighing in at over five pounds. The binding is stout but never gets in the way of viewing the photographic plates, even in the middle of this thick volume. The paper is strong and bright and feels good under the hand. Reproduction on the photos is outstanding with fine tonal range. The design work on the book tends towards minimalist, with subtle tones, simple font choices, and bold charcoal-hued chapter dividers bearing stark roman numerals and nothing more. All the plates are produced in a nearly full-page format, with white margins neither distractingly thin nor drastically wide. Image grouping is carefully planned; where images face each other across pages (which is most of the time), the images act as a kind of diptych, reflecting some common graphic value or subject theme, while images that are strongest on their own are displayed solitary against a blank page. The book looks and feels like every penny of its $100 price.

Vanishing Point is a monumental volume befitting the lifetime’s work of one of America’s greatest photographers. There is no question that this is one of the finest books I have had the pleasure of adding to my collection in years. It is a shame that some in the world of high art have derided Plowden as a “topical” artist. For every avant-guard photographer the art schools crank out, few will ever achieve the richness and depth of the American soul that David Plowden has. His work stands alongside the paintings of Edward Hopper and the literature of Mark Twain as essential to understanding the uniqueness of American culture. With an outstanding introduction, a collection of stunning plates, and a precious gem of an afterward from Plowden himself, Vanishing Point proves itself the definitive work of Plowden’s life. No serious photographer of American culture should be without it. Photography books this fine are rarely printed en-masse; when this book finally sells out, it will likely begin to appreciate in price steadily. Buy it while it’s new, before you have to pay twice as much for a used copy.

Vanishing Point is available from Amazon or Powell’s.

From The Addendum @ route99west.com | © Alexander B. Craghead

Jumptown: The Golden Years of Portland Jazz, 1942-1957
By Robert Dietsche. Oregon State University Press, 500 Kerr Administration, Corvallis OR 97331; http://oregonstate.edu/dept/press/; 9.7 x 6.9 in; trade paperback; 229 pages, 160 b/w photos, 48 illustrations, 1 map; $24.95

A visitor to Portland today might not realize that the city has a rich history in jazz. Fueled by the shipbuilding boom of World War Two, the city’s black population grew rapidly throughout the 40’s, creating a vibrant community on the east bank of the Willamette. This was a land of wild nightclubs, neighborhood bars, shady speakeasies that were open all night. Big names came to play, artists like Duke Ellington, Dizzie Gillespie, and Louis Armstrong, but the city also produced a number of local talents, like Wardell Gray and Doc Severinsen. It was not, however, to last; the construction of the Memorial Coliseum wiped out much of the jazz scene, and much of its history was lost. Dietsche’s Jumptown: The Golden Years of Portland Jazz sets out to record that lost history.

Jumptown is by-and-large a narrative prose history. The story of the Portland jazz scene flows generally in a chronological line from the 1940s through to the 1980s, with each chapter focusing on a particular location that was key to the jazz of the time. The text relies heavily on direct research, consisting primarily of interviews with direct participants; many quotes and extended passages are included verbatim. Supporting this are numerous photos, many culled from those individuals. There are also reproductions of numerous LPs including recordings of local talents.

This work contains a wealth of information on the history of Portland music and Portland’s black neighborhoods. The book is not written for jazz neophytes however; many portions seem to be a stream of name-dropping, as if the book is a bop version of the Chronicles in the King James’ Bible. Without this context, many passages will feel confusing or dense, and even with it, it seems to be more a who’s who list than a story. The book does yield up some gems of local history, however, including the locations of most of the big clubs and some entertaining anecdotes in the words of witnesses and participants themselves.

The book is printed in the dimensions of a typical hardbound book, but is in a softcover trade paperback binding. Paper weight is smooth and the photos are reproduced adequately. The back of the book contains a discography of Portland-related music that proves handy.

Though a bit thin, the book is the only work I am aware of dedicated specifically to Portland jazz culture. Jazz lovers will no doubt understand the laundry list of names better than the average reader, and there is enough obscure history of the city that it will prove a worthy edition for Portland historians wishing for a truly broad library.

Jumptown is available from Amazon, Powell’s Books as well as directly from the publisher.

From The Addendum @ route99west.com | © Alexander B. Craghead

The Lure of Japan’s Railways
By Naotaka Hirota. Japan Times, 5-4, Shibaura 4-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 108-8071, Japan; http://www.japantimes.co.jp/; 11.3 x 8.4 in; hardbound; 168 pages, 8 color and 108 b/w photos, 2 diagrams, 1 map; $25-$40 used.

New books come out by the boatload these days, but how many of them are truly memorable? Now and then a gem shows up, but most of them are pretty stock stuff. Old books, though, can be a wealth of material, and that is one of many reasons for the success of Portland’s Powell’s Books. Among its exhaustive collection, a remarkable book came my way, Naotaka Hirota’s The Lure of Japanese Railways, a masterpiece that is more than just a railroad book, but rather a photographic window into another time and place: Japan, circa 1969.

Following a brief introduction by the photographer, the book is divided into four sections; a short series of color plates, a vast number of black-and-white plates, a technical appendix on the status of Japan’s railways, and a section of captions. Most images are either double truck or full page, grouped by titled themes, and are accompanied by only a small plate number for a caption. Stylistically the photos take center stage, with the text playing a minimal and highly supportive role: this is a true photographer’s monograph and nothing else.

Hirota is a contemporary of American railway photographers like Richard Steinheimer. His work has been noted occasionally in U.S. publications, including 2003’s Starlight on the Rails. Hirota lives up to his contemporaries well; his images display a thoughtful creativity and a playful composition that raises the book’s subject matter to a far higher level than most railroad books achieve. Hirota has a keen photojournalist’s eye and virtuosity, and is as adept with human interest subjects as with abstracts, motion-heavy images, and scenic landscapes. There is excellence here.

The subject matter itself is extraordinary, a time capsule of a “modern” 20th century Japan. Teakettle steam engines take diminutive passenger trains to rural stations; massive steam locomotives assault snow-laden lines; sleek white bullet-nosed Shinkansens speed at aircraft-like velocities past iconic Mount Fuji. Hirota doesn’t miss the context either, and in some cases puts the context right up front where it can’t be ignored. Plate six, for example, places a field of yellow flowers in soft focus for over 80% of the frame; it’s only at the very top that you see the white-and-blue Shinkansen streaking by in a blur. The bold imagery is a delight to behold. In a somewhat less provocative example, Hirota places workers and commuters in the forefront of images throughout the last half of the work.

The Lure of Japan’s Railways doesn’t come without flaws. Many images are printed double-truck, which in a book this size is sometimes awkward; the center of plate 31’s speeding Shinkansens gets lost in the fold, robbing the image of much of its impact. Overall reproduction is excellent, although I wish that the black-and-white images were printed on the same gloss stock paper as the color images up front. The book originally came with a dust jacket, but some examples I’ve seen at booksellers have long since shod theirs.

In the end, The Lure of Japan’s Railways is more than just a railroad book, or even a railroad photo book. It is an excellent work that stands as a remarkable touchstone of 20th century photojournalism. Anyone with an interest in photojournalism would do well to have the book, and it would be welcome as well to those with an interest in industrial photography, railroads, or the culture of Japan.

The Lure of Japan’s Railroads is occasionally available from Powells and Amazon, and usually trades between $25 and $40 for a good to excellent copy.

From The Addendum @ route99west.com | © Alexander B. Craghead

Highway: America’s Endless Dream
Photography by Jeff Brouws, text by Bernd Polster and Phil Patton. Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 115 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011; http://www.hnabooks.com/category/home/88; 10.8 x 9.8 in; softcover; 160 pages, 100 color and 37 b/w photos; $29.95

The open road is one of the central myths of 20th century United States. What makes it so alluring? Perhaps its not that hard to imagine, and not really all that American: was not Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales a road-trip story? Jeff Brouws is probably more well known recently for helping produce two books of excellent railroad images, the critically acclaimed Starlight on the Rails, and the Richard Steinheimer retrospective A Passion for Trains. But Jeff is a photographer in his own right, and has a fascination for road culture that comes shining through in Highway: America’s Endless Dream.

Highway is for the most part divided into six sections: an introduction, and three sections of photographs divided by two essays. Most of Brouws’ photos are shown full page, though there are a few pages that show two images per page at 1/4 page size, side-by-side. Additionally there are occasional pages of blank space, on which are centered quotes from notable individuals such as politicians, writers, and artists.

The book is a bit of an odd hybrid. At first glance it seems like it’s a photographer’s monograph. The presence of two lengthy essays written by authors other than the photographer, however, coupled with some odd inserted sections (such as a list of highway related literature, and another for road movies) makes it feel a bit more coffee-tableish. Not quite a in-depth history, not quite a shallow coffee table book, not quite a monograph; this split personality never stopped bugging me.

The photos, however, more than save it. Though not my first exposure to Brouws’ photography, it is my first book acquisition that focuses purely on his images. For a lover of Rust Belt America such as myself, his color plates are mesmerizing. From portraits of people and buildings to detail heavy images that border on abstract or Warholian pop-art, most of the images are depeopled, as if desolation is a synonym for the highway. And perhaps it is. Many of his images are striking compositions that rival any black-and-white mastery; few are the times I see color photography that feels this good.

The text is not as much of a match. The essays seem at times well researched, and yet elementary errors are made. For example, in the introduction, Bernd Polster calls Route 66 — finished in the 1930s — the “first road to traverse the continent”, totally ignoring the Lincoln Highway of fully twenty years prior. Phil Patton writes the first essay of the book, on the cultural story of the American highway; although an interesting topic the text has a jarring, uneven style, and as long as it is it would have felt better at the beginning of the book as an introductory text. The second essay is penned by Polster, and feels slightly duplicative of Patton’s work. Polster, however, dwells a great deal on Route 66, to the point of feeling like overstatement; for an essay that concentrates more on historical narrative, it’s hard to forgive such hyperbole.

Highway came out as a $30 book and feels like one. The thick softcover is given a good hand feel through the use of nearly full-width fold-back flaps. Paper stock is thick, and image reproduction is vivid, crisp, and clear, without being super-high gloss. Complimenting the rough-and-tumble images is a display font that has an edgy, gritty feel to it. It’s a durable, pretty book you’re not afraid to pick up and flip through, which combined with its excellent content makes it a better coffee table book than most true coffee table books will ever be.

The book is over ten years old now, having been published in 1997. Nevertheless, it remains a visually stimulating book, and a welcome addition to anyone who is interested in photography, pop culture, or the American highway. My slightly thumbed-through copy came used from Powell’s for $25; pristine copies seem to trade for about $50 these days.

Highway is available from Amazon, as well as from Powell’s Books on occasion.

From The Addendum @ route99west.com | © Alexander B. Craghead

In today’s American public transit scene, the word “streetcar” likely holds more cache than any other. Numerous heritage and modern streetcar lines have been opened in the past decade, and with an increased appreciation of the concept on the part of the Federal Transportation Administration (FTA) of late, there are new proposals across the country. In Street Smart the editors attempt to address and explain this streetcar boom.

Although the book focuses on recent streetcar systems, it attempts to provide more than simply an overview of equipment and routes. Instead, the editors focus on providing the wider context, not only of how we got here, but of what streetcar systems do, and where they might take us in the future. The format is an anthology, consisting of articles and essays by professionals within the field, from planners to developers to streetcar operators. The book is divided into eight parts, including an introductory section, followed by sections on the history of streetcars, planning, financing, a set of our case studies, economic development, technical design, and a technical appendix.

The content of Street Smart is somewhat uneven, due to its anthology format. As an example, the definition of what a streetcar is: one author draws a sharp line between streetcars and their light-rail brethren, while another lumps light-rail forerunners like Pacific Electric with streetcars. In another place, one author describes streetcars as modern and relevant to today’s transportation needs, and not “quaint” parts of a “by-gone era”. Yet the editors chose to include an essay on why conservatives ought to support streetcars that calls on the imagery of Gilded Age America, with all its Queen Anne gingerbread glory, and a return to simpler times.

The tone of the work is consistently upbeat, but this is to be expected from a book produced by an organization that is promoting the mode. Indeed this is less a book for the general public than a kind of textbook for transportation planners and city-builders. To achieve this, there is a significant focus on the Portland Streetcar, which is front-and-center in most of the articles. This is relieved somewhat by Chapter 5, with its four (non-Pacific Northwest) case studies. Afterwards, however, we delve into economic development, which is almost 100% Portland again. While interesting, especially for outsiders, I’m left wondering if the editors couldn’t find examples of significant streetcar-driven development in other cities that could have been equally highlighted. The rest of the book is almost entirely technical minutiae. I can’t help but feel that this is an odd way to end the anthology; the book would benefit from a concluding chapter which might include a glance into the future of streetcar technology and ideas, as well as summarize the editors’ vision.

The book is lavishly supported with photos and other images. Some of these are quite spectacular, especially the many images of the San Francisco Muni’s historic F-Line streetcars, one of which adorns the cover. Just looking at them makes you want to jump on board. The graphic design is quite slick, and the book is printed on a heavy stock in four-color process, making it feel luxurious to hold. Reproduction, however, is uneven, with at least two images displaying some major rasterization, and a handful being slightly on the soft side.

But let’s not nitpick. Street Smart is an excellent, perhaps unprecedented book. Although slightly rosy-toned, the book is a wealth of information, and an sure primer for anyone wanting to know more about streetcar systems from a functional standpoint. It’s worth buying for anyone with an interest — professional or otherwise — in land use, transportation, public transit, or economic development.

Street Smart is available from Powell’s Books as well as directly from the publisher.

Logging Railroads of Weyerhaeuser’s Vail-McDonald Operation
By Frank W. Telewski & Scott D. Barrett. Oso Publishing Company, P.O. Box 1249, Hamilton, MT 59840; www.osorail.com; 9 x 11.5 in; hardcover; 354 pages, 371 b/w photos, 10 illustrations, 65 maps; $49.95

Logging railroads seem like a thing of the distant past. Mention them to someone and most won’t even know what you are talking about, but the few who do will probably conjure up images of teakettle steam engines hauling Paul Bunyan sized logs down tracks in some range of mountains that might have come off of a backdrop for the TV show Bonanza. Few realize that logging railroads survived well past the Second World War, or in the case of Washington State, even until today.

One of the last and biggest log roads in Washington State was Weyerhaueser’s Chehalis Western. Having taken over the Milwaukee Road’s branches south of Tacoma in 1980, this line ran large log trains from Chehalis to the port of Tacoma — behind the last GP38-2’s built by General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division — until 1992. With the publication of the lengthily titled Logging Railroads of Weyerhaeuser’s Vail-McDonald Operation, there is finally a work that tells the story of this line, and its adjacent feeders, the Vail branch, and the Curtis Milburn & Eastern, starting in 1924 and running through to 1995.

This book is printed in a large hardback format identical to many college textbooks, and indeed it carries a feel of a textbook history inside as well. Reproduction of the numerous black-and-white photos is top notch, and many maps are also included. The work is organized into thirteen chapters and includes numerous technical appendices, which reflects its highly specialized subject matter.

The content overall is solid. One could wish for a more up-to-date final chapter from a book so freshly published, but as well researched and lavishly illustrated as the book is, this hardly is a critical flaw. Today, what remains of the line is primarily operated by Tacoma Rail, and plays host to tourist railroads Mount Rainier Scenic, and Chehalis-Centralia, and this book has become a must have for many of their employees. Fans of the Chehalis Western, the Milwaukee Road, or today’s shortlines south of Puget Sound would also enjoy this book.

Logging Railroads of Weyerhaeuser’s Vail-McDonald Operation is available occasionally from Amazon as well as directly from the publisher.

The Night Journal: A Novel
By Elizabeth Crook. Viking/Penguin Group, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014; http://us.penguingroup.com/; 6.3 x 9.1 in; hardcover; 464 pages; $24.95

Few novels delve into the world of the railroad, and fewer still successfully; Elizabeth Crook has written not only a fine novel of the late 19th century railroad world, but a fine novel, period.

In the 1890s, Hannah Bass, a Harvey girl working a remote hotel in New Mexico meets, and then marries, a famous surveying engineer for the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, a man patterned after William Raymond Morley, the discoverer of Glorieta Pass. The political conflicts of pre-statehood New Mexico, the ever-expanding Santa Fe, and the disappearance of Hannah’s husband all weave into a story in the present day, involving Hannah’s granddaughter and her discovery of a legendary, long-missing journal written by Hannah.

With a well timed plot and interesting characters, the novel also contains one of the most gruesome and realistic potrayals of a steam-era train derailment. Crossing the genre border between mainstream historical fiction, mystery, and railroad literature, The Night Journal should be a pleasure to any reader of fiction.

The Night Journal is available from Powell’s Books as well as from Amazon.com.

Leaders Count: The Story of the BNSF Railway
By Larry Kaufman. Texas A&M University Press, John H. Lindsey Building, Lewis Street, 4354 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4354; http://www.tamu.edu/upress/; 9.1 x 6.1 in; trade paperback; 384 pages,; $14.95

Once upon a time, there were dozens of so-called “class one” railroads across the American continent, wielding massive political power and reshaping the nation. Today, most of those companies are gone, thanks to a corporate consolidation craze that began prior to World War One and continues today. In the 21st century American west, there are now only two major railroads: Union Pacific, and the BNSF Railway. Leaders Count is the “official” corporate history of BNSF, published under contract by them and distributed by Texas A&M University.

The book divides into roughly three sections. The first deals with the history of the BN heritage companies through the 19th and early 20th centuries. The second portion deals with regulation, the forces leading up to the BN merger, and the early BN period. The last segment covers the BNSF railway, from formation through to the present.

The book has a reputation of being a hard hitting self-examination of the company, it’s successes, and it’s mistakes. By-and-large, Kaufman does a decent job of telling the corporate history, but from the beginning there is an undercurrent of BNSF and its heritage roads being on the side of angels, and rival companies such as Union Pacific (UP) being less than stellar. While there is some truth to UP having a greater number of scandals in its past, BNSF’s heritage companies were hardly innocent either, especially the Northern Pacific.

Minor factual errors in the book make me question how much primary source research Kaufman actually did. Another example of his lack of deep research is his knee-jerk acceptance of conventional wisdom, especially regarding the demise of the Milwaukee’s Pacific Extension.

The segments dealing with regulation tend to be wonkish, but the segments regarding the creation of BNSF predecessor Burlington Northern are as good as anything I’ve seen in print on the subject yet. The newer portions of the book cover the creation of BNSF well, but tend to gloss over differences between BNSF previous leaders such as Rob Krebs and Gerald Grinstein. It’s clear this is the sanitized version of BNSF, told from a board room perspective, and meant not to offend anyone still around.

Kaufman closes his epilogue with text about BNSF today, sounding much like a company press release. While there’s a lot of value to his final analysis of the future, you can’t help but feel that it’s not an unbiased view, despite his claim in the preface that the company had never exerted the slightest influence on what he wrote.

Why was this book written? About half-way through, it occurred to me that the book in many was resembles a text-book; I wonder if the company uses it in their Management Training Program? Leaders Count is printed in trade-paperback form, the same rough dimensions most Bibles are published in. Indeed there are two versions: a plain cover versions issued in 2003 — likely largely used internally by the company — and a version sold to the public with a photo cover. One wonders if there is also a red letter edition.

Leaders Count is certainly not unbiased, nor does it live up to it’s reputation as a truly critical self-examination of company policy and leadership issues. That said, the book is probably the most concise corporate history on BNSF and it’s predecessors. For anyone who wants to have one, comprehensive history text on these companies, this is it, and with used BNSF issued copies in paperback for about $5 a pop, it’s a steal. Just be prepared to read; this is no picture book and it’s no pulp novel either.

Leaders Count is available from Amazon. and from Powell’s Books.

The Men Who Loved Trains: The Story of Men Who Battled Greed to Save an Ailing Industry
By Rush Loving Jr. Indiana University Press, 601 North Morton Street, Bloomington, IN 47404-3797; http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/; 9.3 x 6.2 in; hardbound; 360 pages; $27.95

Penn Central. To this day, the name of this corporation sends shudders through the world of finance. When it went bankrupt in June of 1970, it was the largest bankruptcy in United States history, and it held that title for the next thirty-one years. (It took the collapse of Enron in 2001 to supplant it). In The Men Who Loved Trains, journalist Rush loving tells the story of how Penn Central came into being, but even more importantly how a few men picked up the pieces afterward and pulled the railroad industry out of a tailspin that might have proved fatal.

Loving’s work is essentially a journalistic book, rather than a scholarly one. It is written in a prose style and has an eminently readable pacing. Yet don’t take this for being lightweight; that the author can weave such an unwieldy mess into a fast and cohesive narrative is a testament to his abilities as a writer. In ways, the book follows in the tradition of works such as Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff.

The story line follows the chronology of the demise of Penn Central, the struggle to pick up the pieces, and the creation, life, and eventual parting out of PC’s successor, Conrail. Throughout the work we meet various key individuals; from the fiery Alfred Perlman to former CSX Transportation executive (and future Treasury Secretary) John Snow. Along the way, we come back again and again to John McClellan, tracking his career from entry level PC staffer through to planner for the Department of Transportation and eventually strategic advisory for Norfolk Southern. His career serves as a foil for the events of Conrail’s life and death, humanizing a story of corporate battle and macro economics.

And what a story it is! Following the collapse of PC, many pundits were predicting doom for the entire railroad industry. The more optimistic felt that the Northeast lived behind a wall in which railroad transportation simply would never pencil out. Although a government takeover of PC would help keep the trains running, many in the private sector feared it as a dangerous first step towards nationalization. In the end, a select few fought an uphill battle for the creation first of passenger carrier Amtrak, and then of the freight railroad what would come to be known as Conrail.

Like Amtrak, Conrail has a belabored existence for much of its life. It inherited a property that was severely overextended and under-maintained. Only great gobs of public money could solve Conrail’s problems, and even then there was no real guarantee it would turn the company around. Throughout its existence, philosophical and political opponents watched and salivated as they waited for the company to trip and fall.

As Loving tells, however, Conrail endured, returning to black ink, and eventually becoming a publicly traded, private sector corporation. Loving tells, too, of the irony that was the end of Conrail; the company became the subject of a bidding war between NS and CSXT, and was finally split between them in 1997, redrawing the Northeastern railroad map along lines that were eerily similar to what Al Perlman had wanted before he was forced into agreeing with the PC merger.

The book attempts to carry the story without bias, in the best journalistic fashion, and most of the time succeeds in doing so. There is, however, a distinct bias in favor of McClellan’s employer, NS, and the between-the-lines feeling is that Loving and McClellan are friends. Still, Loving remains remarkable professional, remaining gentlemanly even when dealing with McClellan’s arch-rival Snow.

Conrail was arguably the nation’s most controversial modern railroad project. The Men Who Loved Trains tells an important tale of railroading, corporate intrigue, and a thousand might-have-beens that make it one of the hallmark railroad history books about the late 20th century, of importance not just to scholars of Northeastern and Midwestern railroad history, but to anyone with an interest in railroads, the politics of transportation, or public policy.

The Men Who Loved Trains is available from Amazon, Powell’s, and directly from the publisher.

Westsider: A Story of the Southern Pacific Portland Division Westside Line
By Dan Rehwalt. Grizzly Press, 76470 High Street, Oakridge, OR 97463; 5.25 x 8.25 in; trade paperback; 88 pages, 43 b/w photos, illustrations, and maps; $12.95

The trade paperback memoir is probably one of the most ubiquitous of books in small communities. A good percentage of retirees tend to think themselves ten-cent Hemingways, and thanks to cheap modern printing technology, they can realize their dream of being an author. Few of these books merit the attention of larger presses, but many of them prove to be solid if not brilliant reading. They are the literary equivalent of the stories told beside campfires, over cups of coffee with the boys, or with a few beers at the end of a long day. They are as common — and as American — as roadside diners. Dan Rehwalt has been publishing a number of these style of books in the last few years, telling the story of working for the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Oregon Division in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.

Westisder, published in 2004, is my favorite among them. This fairly slim volume contains a series of short stories of Rehwalt’s past on the railroad, this time focusing on the vast “Westside” branch network that SP ran in the Willamette Valley. Rehwalt writes a clean, straightforward prose in first person; his choice to confine this volume solely to his own stories and none from anyone else helps give the work a more intimate air. For railfans and Portland history buffs, the rarest gem is a chapter devoted to operating on the Jefferson Street line, presently the Willamette Shore Trolly line and one of the least documented of SP’s feeders in the state.

The books has a format familiar to fans of this type of volume; lots of text supported by a few maps and photos reproduced to the best quality a photocopier can provide. But this is not a book you buy for photos, and while basic or even crude at times, the photos provide enough context for those unfamiliar with the territory being discussed. For the price, there can be no complaining; the real value is in the text.

As a book of railroad related stories, Westsider does have a limited audience. It should, however, find a welcome place on the shelf of any fan of Oregon railroad history as well as Portland historians. Additionally, most of the routes in the book are now operated by regional Portland & Western, and this book has become a must have for both students of operations these lines, as well as employees of the company.

Westsider is currently available from Karen’s Books.

A Passion for Trains: The Railroad Photography of Richard Steinheimer
By Richard Steinheimer and Jeff Brouws. W. W. Norton, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110; http://www.wwnorton.com/; 12.1 x 10.9 in; hardcover; 192 pages, 160 duotone b/w photos; $65.00

“Stein” has long known to be the greatest American railroad photographer, and now Jeff Brouws has finally produced an artistic monograph which is worthy of Richard Steinheimer’s long career. Filled with many never before published images, the book not only gives you a glimpse at Stein’s amazing vision, but also at some of his early works and his failures, showing you the progress of the man’s talent. Additionally, Brouws’ erudite introduction provides an in-depth study of the man and his skills, and the long search for and development of them by Stein.

The text alone is an eye opener for anyone who would dare to follow in Dick’s footsteps, and as such, the book is highly recommended to all railroad photographers who wish to elevate their work to an artistic achievement that is something more than inbred provincial documentarianism.

A Passion for Trains is available from Amazon.com.