Alex Craghead: Book Reviews

Alexander Craghead is a self-described writer and photographer (whom I don't know). He has just written a detailed review of the upcoming book "The Call of Trains: Railroad Photographs by Jim Shaughnessy," due out in November but for which he received an advance review copy. I ran across his review in the Yahoo ObsCar group and found it fascinating, and his blog even more so, because he has also reviewed the David Plowden book "Vanishing Point: Fifty Years of Photography." (Several years ago he also reviewed "A Passion for Trains" by Richard Steinheimer; alas, only in a cursory manner.) He has also reviewed a number of other books on railroad subjects; here is his book review section and here is his personal web page (with a very interesting organization, analogous to sections and chapters of a book).

Shaughnessy is of course an important figure in railroad photography and I look forward to the book. But the review is worth examining in its own right, of course especially if one is considering buying the book (or putting it on one's holiday wish list, which I definitely am). He not only discusses some of the images in the book but also comments on the accompanying essay by Jeff Brouws and expands on that to discussing his own views of the (implicit) comparison to Steinheimer created by the mere existence of the book, in similar form and by the same editor/author as the Steinheimer volume. The review is detailed and rich.

His review of the Plowden book is equally valuable. He also gives significant attention to the included essay (by Steve Edwards) and also goes through the images, in even greater detail than in the Shaughnessy review. Having re-read the review with my copy of Plowden at hand, I can attest to the quality of the insights made. In turn, that makes me look forward even more to the Shaughnessy book.

One might quibble with some of Craghead's points. For example, in discussing Plowden he notes "the clinical inhumanity of a nuclear power plant" but later he says "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." One wonders the extent the observation is driven by the actual differences between the images versus the personal perceptions of the nuclear power and agricultural industries. Having less of a romantic view of farming, I am less taken by the barn images, devoid of surrounding tools, animals, even footprints in the mud and thus quite dry (plates 213, 217, and 220 leave me unmoved) and categorize them more closely to a number of the images of industrial structures with a similar flavor.

Nonetheless I have learned much by reading Craghead's reviews. His mind operates differently than mine; I do not write phrases like "mixing a lyric style of photography with a documentary sensibility" or think thoughts like "beyond, there is no world, no ocean, no hills." By nature I don't read stories into pictures, or at least I leave them in my unconscious. By reading material like this, I can try.

In writing about the reviews and the reviewer, however, I should not overlook the reviewed! I have the Plowden and Steinheimer books and will purchase the Shaughnessy when it comes out. The first two are lengthy and beautifully printed compendiums, retrospectives of their work, and the Shaughnessy should be of the same editorial and production quality as the Steinheimer. I have contemplated blogging on some of the individual Steinheimer images and intend to inquire about the use of smaller versions of the images here; otherwise I might yet do it anyway without images, simply referring to the plate numbers.

Only a small portion of the Plowden book features RR images, however, 28 in the opening chapter plus a handful at the end; a few images elsewhere in the book have some RR content. I find them of less interest than those by Steinheimer, with the possible exception of plate 14 and 20 and perhaps 7 and 230. As a whole I find the images in the book more difficult to appreciate but am finding that the effort bears some fruit. Nonetheless, I don't favor Plowden's style overall, although a number of the images do move me or capture my attention.

[NOTE: I have not asked for permission to use the images from the dust jackets of the books. As those images are being used to sell those books, I presume there is no problem with my use of them here.]