O winston link biography meaning

O. Winston Link

American photographer (–)

O. Winston Link

Born

Ogle Winston Link


()December 16,

Brooklyn, New York, U.S.

DiedJanuary 30, () (aged&#;86)

Katonah, New York, U.S.

OccupationPhotographer
Years&#;active–
Spouses

Vanda Link

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(m.&#;; div.&#;)&#;

Conchita Link

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ChildrenWinston Conway Link

Ogle Winston Link[1] (December 16, – January 30, ), known commonly as O.

Winston Link, was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photography and sound recordings of the last days of steam locomotive railroading on the Norfolk and Western in the United States in the late s. A commercial photographer, Link helped establish rail photography as a hobby. He also pioneered night photography, producing several well known examples including Hotshot Eastbound, a photograph of a steam train passing a drive-in movie theater,[2] and Hawksbill Creek Swimming Hole showing a train crossing a bridge above children bathing.[3]

Early life

Link and his siblings, Eleanor and Albert Jr., spent their childhood in the borough of Brooklyn, New York City, where they lived with their parents, Albert Link Sr.

and Anne Winston Jones Link.

O winston link biography meaning and origin Selected Books. He adapted to the technique of making posed photographs looking candid, as well as creatively emphasizing a point. External links [ edit ]. Winston Link photographed the Norfolk and Western, the last major steam railroad in the United States, when it was converting its operations from steam to diesel in the s.

Link's given names honor ancestors Alexander Ogle and John Winston Jones, who had served in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 19th century.[4] Al Link, who taught woodworking in the New York City Public School system, encouraged his children's interest in arts and crafts and introduced Winston to photography.[citation needed]

Link's early photography was created with a borrowed medium formatAutographic Kodak camera.

By the time, he was in high school he had built his own photographic enlarger.[5] After completing high school, Link attended the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, receiving a degree in civil engineering. Before his graduation in , he spoke at a banquet for the institute's newspaper, where he served as photo editor.

An executive from Carl Byoir's public relations firm was present and was impressed by Link's speaking ability. He offered Link a job as a photographer.[6]

Career

Link worked for Carl Byoir and Associates for five years, learning his trade on the job. He adapted to the technique of making posed photographs looking candid, as well as creatively emphasizing a point.

On his first major assignment, to photograph part of the state of Louisiana in the summer of , he found himself in New Iberia, the location where Cecil B. DeMille's movie The Buccaneer, about Jean LaFitte was being filmed. Here he met his future first wife, a former Miss Ark-La-Tex, now actress/model/body double, Vanda Marteal Oglesby, who stood-in for lead actress Franciska Gaal.

They "took a shine" to one another, and later that year she posed for some of his photographs in the French Quarter of New Orleans.[7] They eventually married in , but later divorced. Some of Link's photographs from this time included an image of a man aiming a gun at a pig wearing a bulletproof vest, and one eventually known as "What Is This Girl Selling?" or "Girl on Ice," which was widely published in the United States and later featured in Life as a "classic publicity picture." According to Thomas Garver, a later assistant to Link, during his employment at Byoir's firm, Link "clearly defined a point of view and developed working methods that were to shape his entire career."[8]

When World War II reached the United States, Link found himself unable to join the military due to mumps-induced hearing loss.

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    • He left Byoir's employ in to work for the Airborne Instruments Laboratory, part of Columbia University. Drawing on his university degree and professional photographic experience, Link worked at the laboratory as both project engineer and photographer. The laboratory was then researching a device to enable aircraft to detect submerged submarines. Link's main responsibility was photographing the project for the United States government.[9]

    In , with the end of the war, Link's employment at the Airborne Instruments Laboratory ended.

    O. winston link photographs Last Steam Railroad p. In Scianna completed Quelli di Bagheria, a book on his home town in Sicily, in which he tries to reconstruct the atmosphere of his youth through writings and photographs of Bagheria and the people who live there. Life Along the Line. Winston Link , was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photography and sound recordings of the last days of steam locomotive railroading on the Norfolk and Western in the United States in the late s.

    Byoir invited Link back, but Link instead opened his own studio in New York City in His clients included Goodrich, Alcoa, Texaco, and Ethyl.[10]

    Rail photography: Norfolk and Western project

    While in Staunton, Virginia, for an industrial photography job in , Link's longstanding love of railroads became focused on the nearby Norfolk and Western Railway line.

    N&W was the last major (Class I) railroad to make the transition from steam to diesel motive power and had refined its use of steam locomotives, earning a reputation for "precision transportation." Link took his first night photograph of the road on January 21, , in Waynesboro, Virginia. On May 29, , the N&W announced its first conversion to diesel and Link's work became a documentation of the end of the steam era.

    He returned to Virginia for approximately 20 visits to continue photographing the N&W. His last night shot was taken in and the last of all in That year the road completed the transition to diesel, by which time he had accumulated negatives on the project.[11]

    Although it was entirely self-financed, Link's work was encouraged and facilitated by N&W officials, from president Robert H.

    Smith downwards. Besides the locomotives, he captured the people of the N&W performing their jobs on the railroad and in the trackside communities. Some of his images were of the massive Roanoke Shops, where the company had built and maintained its locomotives.[11]

    Link's images were meticulously set up and posed, and he chose to take most of his railroad photographs at night.

    O winston link prints for sale: Equally adept at both music and art, her formal education fell to music. In our world defined by science and technology, the work looked at why irrational rituals make a strong come-back. Read Edit View history. From to he went to photography classes at the Ostkreuzschule - School for Photography and Design in Berlin.

    He said "I can't move the sun &#; and it's always in the wrong place &#; and I can't even move the tracks, so I had to create my own environment through lighting."[12] Although others, including Philip R. Hastings and Jim Shaughnessy, had photographed locomotives at night before, Link's vision required him to develop new techniques for flash photography of such large subjects.

    For instance, the drive-in image Hotshot Eastbound (Iaeger, West Virginia), photographed on August 2, [negative NW], used 42 #2 flashbulbs and one #0 fired simultaneously.[13] Link, with an assistant such as George Thom, had to lug all his equipment into position and wire it up: this was done in series so any failure would prevent a picture being taken.

    Taking night shots of moving trains the right position for the subject could only be guessed at. Link used a 4 x 5 Graphic View view camera with black and whitefilm, from which he produced silver gelatin prints.[citation needed]

    Hawksbill Creek Swimming Hole (Luray, Virginia) was photographed on August 9, [NW].

    Other widely known images include Swimming Pool (Welch, West Virginia) ( [NW]), Ghost Town (Stanley, Virginia) [NW], Main Line on Main Street (Northfork, West Virginia) ( [NW]) and Mr and Mrs Ben Pope watch the last steam powered passenger train (Max Meadows, Virginia) ( [NW]).[14][15]

    In addition to his black and white night shots, Link also recorded the single daytime train on the Norfolk & Western's hilly Abingdon branch, serving the rural communities from Abingdon, Virginia, 55 miles (88&#;km) south to West Jefferson, North Carolina.

    It was also on this line that most of his railroad color photography was done; a selection is included in The Last Steam Railroad in America. His familiar view of a horse and steam locomotive Maud bows to the Virginia Creeper (Green Cove, Virginia)[16] exists in black and white and color versions.

    In addition to photographing them, Link was also making sound recordings of the trains, which he issued on a set of six gramophone records between and under the overall title Sounds of Steam Railroading.

    In the railfan world he was probably best known by these, and by photographs published in Trains magazine and elsewhere in the s, which inspired others to follow his example.[17] The recordings he made from to were inducted into the National Recording Registry in [18]

    A traveling exhibition in brought his work to a wider public[15] as did Paul Yule's award-winning documentary Trains That Passed In The Night (), in which Link re-visited the scenes of his classic photographs of the Norfolk and Western.

    Later life

    From until he retired in , Link devoted himself to advertising. Among notable pictures taken during this period are those recording construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and other views of New York Harbor including the great ocean liners. In retirement, Link moved to South Salem, Westchester County, New York.[citation needed][19]

    In , Link's second wife, Conchita, was arrested for (and later convicted of) stealing a collection of Link's photographs and attempting to sell them, claiming that Link had Alzheimer's disease and that she had power of attorney.

    After being released in , she again attempted to sell some of Link's works that she had stolen, this time using the Internet auction site eBay. She received a three-year sentence.[20] Conchita was also accused of imprisoning her husband.[21] However, this allegation is disputed by some, and it never led to any criminal charges against Conchita.[citation needed] The story of Winston and Conchita became the subject of the documentary The Photographer, His Wife, Her Lover () made by Paul Yule.

    Conchita died on October 1, [22]

    In popular culture

    Link made a cameo appearance as a steam locomotive engineer in the film October Sky, operating Southern Railway (decorated to look like an N&W steam locomotive). He was actively involved with the planning of a museum of his work when he suffered a heart attack near his home in South Salem.

    He was transported to Northern Westchester Hospital in Mt. Kisco, New York, where he died on January 30, Mr. Link was interred adjacent to his parents in Elmwood Cemetery, Shepherdstown, Jefferson County, West Virginia.[23]

    Museum

    The rail photography of Winston Link is featured at the O. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke, Virginia, which opened in January The museum is housed in the former passenger station of the Norfolk and Western Railway.

    Link's N&W caboose forms part of the display.[citation needed]

    See also

    Notes

    1. ^Link was named after two of his maternal ancestors: the twentieth Speaker of the United States House of RepresentativesJohn Winston Jones and Pennsylvanian Representative Alexander Ogle.

      Last Steam Railroad p.

    2. ^This was duplicated in "Dumbbell Indemnity", an episode of The Simpsons (Visual comparison between "Hotshot Eastbound" and The Simpsons sceneArchived June 30, , at the Wayback Machine)
    3. ^O. Winston Link Museum website biographyArchived October 14, , at the Wayback Machine, Archived November 28, , at the Wayback Machine .

    4. O winston link prints for sale
    5. O winston link biography meaning and facts
    6. O winston link recordings

      7. Accessed Oct 20,

    7. ^Garver, Thomas H. "A Tribute to O. Winston Link". NRHS Bulletin, National Railway Historical Society. Vol.&#;73, no.&#;Summer pp.&#;3–
    8. ^Last Steam Railroad pp. &#;3; Museum p. 3.
    9. ^Last Steam Railroad p.
    10. ^O Winston Link biography at
    11. ^Last Steam Railroad pp.

      ; Museum p. 4.

    12. ^Museum p. 5; Last Steam Railroad p.
    13. ^Last Steam Railroad p.
    14. ^ abLink, O. Winston (). Steam, Steel & Stars. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN&#;.
    15. ^Last Steam Railroad p.
    16. ^Ghost Trains.

      It was taken at 1/ sec. at f

    17. ^"O. Winston Link Museum - ". Archived from the original on November 7, Retrieved February 4,
    18. ^ abGhost Trains.
    19. ^"O. Winston Link Museum - ". Archived from the original on January 7, Retrieved February 4,
    20. ^Brouws, Jeff; Delvers, Ed ().

      Starlight on the Rails. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN&#;.

    21. ^"Steam Locomotive Recordings--O. Winston Link () on "(PDF).

      O winston link biography meaning and definition A reflection on the subject precedes it. Publisher : Publisher : Harry N. A meditation on finality follows it, and it is here, during this exalting and fragile moment, that the real photographic writing develops, sequencing the images. He received many awards from international competitions.

      Archived(PDF) from the original on November 16, Retrieved November 16,

    22. ^Sholis, Brian (April 1, ). "O. Winston Link". Artforum. Archived from the original on November 16, Retrieved December 11,
    23. ^"Ex-Wife's 2nd Trial". May 6, The Hook. Accessed June 19,
    24. ^"Hell mates: Sad tale of Winston and Conchita"
    25. ^"Conchita Hayes - The Putnam County News & Recorder".

      The Putnam County News & Recorder. November 16, Archived from the original on July 29, Retrieved July 29,

    26. ^Obituary, The Journal News, February 2,

    References

    • Dulaney, Ben (). "Flash bulb artist photographs the Norfolk and Western".

      Norfolk and Western Magazine: –3.

    • Garver, Tom (). O. Winston Link: the Man and the Museum. O. Winston Link Museum.ISBN&#;
    • Garver, Thomas H. (). "Railroad photographs of O. Winston Link". American Art Review. 12 (5): –7.
    • Jones, Malcolm ().

      "The most beautiful trains in the world". Preservation. 51 (6): 30–8.

    • Korner, Anthony (). "The Night Owl". Artforum International. 27: –6.
    • Link, O. Winston (). Night Trick on the Norfolk and Western Railway. Norfolk and Western RY.
    • Link, O. Winston ().

      Ghost Trains. Chrysler Museum. ISBN&#;.ISBN&#;

    • Link, O. Winston (). Steam, Steel & Stars.

      O winston link biography meaning For instance, the drive-in image Hotshot Eastbound Iaeger, West Virginia , photographed on August 2, [negative NW], used 42 2 flashbulbs and one 0 fired simultaneously. His familiar view of a horse and steam locomotive Maud bows to the Virginia Creeper Green Cove, Virginia [ 16 ] exists in black and white and color versions. Extended Deadline: January 24, Enter Here. Inspiring Portfolios.

      Harry N. Abrams. ISBN&#;.ISBN&#;

    • Link, O. Winston (). The Last Steam Railroad in America. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN&#;.ISBN&#;
    • Morgan, David (July ). "The mixed train: photography by O. Winston Link". Trains: 31–
    • Morgan, David (November ). "Steam after dark".

      Trains: 30–

    • Oughterbridge, David E. (). "Chugging to Extinction". Connoisseur. (): –7.
    • O. Winston Link Museum official website
    • The works of O. Winston Link
    • The photographs of O. Winston Link

    External links