Kelly Avenue pedestrian underpass, Portland, OR, April 2010. Kodak TMY.
Recently, over at civics21.org, I wrote about the idea of hyperlocalism and history, or as local history blogger John Chilson described it to me, “microhistory.” This concept encompasses the bits and pieces of the past — the loose strings about the edges — that don’t often …
Category Archives: Photography
Historic Hyper-Localism and Photography
A plug and a project
In Between. Portland, OR, March 2010. Kodak TMY.
This month I have two articles in the Online Extras section at the website of TRAINS Magazine. Both of these stories were written for a content extra that promotes the activities of the Center for Railroad Photography and Art, whose excellent 2010 conference I attended (and impromptu got …
Review: Railroad noir: The American West at the end of the Twentieth Century
Railroad Noir: The American West at the End of the Twentieth Century
Narratives by Linda Grant Niemann, Photographs by Joel Jensen. Indiana University Press, 601 North Morton Street, Bloomignton, IN 47404; http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/; 11.3 x 9.1 x 0.8 in; hardbound; 168 pages, 23 color and 17 b/w photos, 1 map; 39.95
In American culture, the railroad is often …
Portland bridge lovers: Help out Zeb
Normally I use this space to talk about my own photography and writing, or sometimes about the subjects that I tend to focus on: land use and transportation, cultural geography, and industrial archaeology. Today though, I want to highlight a project from someone else, the bridges of Portland as photographed by Zeb Andrews.
Zeb has …
Photos on Railfan’s web site
Old United Railways mainline in Guild’s Lake. Portland, OR, April, 2010. Kodak TMY.
Back from the Center for Railroad Photography and Art’s 2010 “Conversations About Photography” conference in Chicagoland, I’ve got a few brief things to catch up on.
First, Railfan and Railroad has published two of my photos and a short article about the relationship …
The Role of Loss
Checking For Obstructions. Portland, OR, March 2010. Kodak TMY.
This week, a friend picked up a copy of David Plowden’s retrospective, Vanishing Point, a book I once wrote a Russian-novel length review of here.
I’ve come to be a great admirer of Plowden. His photography is simultaneously straightforward yet lyrical. Unlike the works of, say, the New …
On the failure of a typology
Portion of NW 5th Avenue, Portland
Over the last few years, I’ve been working through a significant shift in my photography, and as a result I’ve been experimenting with a number of new techniques and ideas. One of those has been the notion of typologies.
Typologies are a photographic tool that owe much of their heritage …
Urbanity and intimacy
North Interstate Avenue, Portland, OR, February 2010. Kodak TMY.
The sweeping view, the grand vista, the bird’s-eye perspective. These are all classic ways of shooting the city, of trying to capture the greatness on a metropolitan scale. Such perspectives have been the staple of urban photography since the medium was born in the mid-Nineteenth Century.
Once …
10th Avenue
SW 10th Avenue, Portland, OR, September 2009. Kodak TMY.
Portland really is a transportation city. It seems that we can never have enough different modes of transportation, much less use them as officially intended. We have light rail that behaves like a metro, commuter trains trying to behave like light rail, and last but not least …
Review: Classic Steam: Timeless Photographs of North American Steam Railroading
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 …