Overview

Jim Shaughnessy: Essential Witness is a comprehensive overview of Shaughnessy's sixty year as a railroad photographer. Starting in the late 1940s, he began documenting in earnest the rapidly changing railroad scene in the Northeastern United States. His interests and travels also took him to other areas of the country to document the Rio Grande narrow gauge in Colorado and the UP Big Boys in Wyoming, and various locations in Canada. His timing was perfect: he was there to record the dramatic transition between the steam and diesel eras as well as documenting and recording for posterity the workers behind the machines that operated in the depots, roundhouses and back shops of the American railroad environment. Lucius Beebe once described Shaughnessy as 'a master in the massive effects of black and white.' The book includes some 150 duotone photographs taken between 1948 and 1970, with the emphasis on the 1950s and 1960s. Images include landscapes, cities and towns; action shots of formidable trains barreling down the tracks; snaps of weary railroad workers; nighttime photos of shadowy enclaves within the railyard; and many more.

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9780500544860

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Jim Shaughnessy is one of the most influential forces that reshaped American railroad photography in the 1950s. He started shooting trains and the railroad environment in 1946 and is still active today. Shaughnessy’s work has appeared in over 100 books and has been featured in Trains, Railroad, Railfan and Classic Trains. He authored the seminal works Delaware & Hudson (1967) and The Rutland Road (1964), which remain in print. He was awarded a lifetime achievement award for photography from the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society in 1987. Kevin P. Keefe was editor in chief of Trains magazine from 1992 to 2000. Subsequently he was the publisher of Trains and vice president-editorial of its parent firm, Kalmbach Publishing Co., until he retired in 2016. He is a director of the Center for Railroad Photography and Art. His award-winning book Twelve Twenty-Five: The Life and Times of a Steam Locomotive, was published in 2015.

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