Living Room on the Tracks, Lithia, Virginia, December 16, 1958

O. Winston Link, Living Room on the Tracks, Lithia, Virginia, December 16, 1958, 1958, printed 1984, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Vladimir and Eileen Toumanoff, 1991.151.8, © 1984, O. Winston Link
Copied O. Winston Link, Living Room on the Tracks, Lithia, Virginia, December 16, 1958, 1958, printed 1984, gelatin silver print, sheet: 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61.0 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Vladimir and Eileen Toumanoff, 1991.151.8, © 1984, O. Winston Link

Artwork Details

Title
Living Room on the Tracks, Lithia, Virginia, December 16, 1958
Artist
Date
1958, printed 1984
Location
Not on view
Dimensions
sheet: 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61.0 cm.)
Copyright
© 1984, O. Winston Link
Credit Line
Gift of Vladimir and Eileen Toumanoff
Mediums Description
gelatin silver print
Classifications
Keywords
  • Landscape — Virginia — Lithia
Object Number
1991.151.8
Linked Open Data
https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1991.151.8

Artwork Description

When the Norfolk and Western Railway Company announced its conversion from steam to diesel locomotives in 1955, O. Winston Link, an industrial photographer, began to document the line that would ultimately mark the end of the steam era in the United States. By the time he made his last photograph of this series in 1960, he had made over 2,400 negatives. Link took most of his railroad photographs at night, developing new techniques for flash photography and dramatic lighting. His photographs were exactingly set up and posed to appear like stills from a movie, in which a locomotive is a player in a scene of domestic or social life.


A Democracy of Images: Photographs from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2013