Recreation #1

The original image New Main Line at Duncannon, 1906, by William Rau is serene depiction of a newly built railroad and train. Rau was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1855 and in 1874 he married William Bell's daughter which greatly helped his career. After being hired by the U.S. government and traveling around the world he was assigned to be the official photographer of the Lehigh Valley Railroad in Pennsylvania. His work is well known because he was taking images of some of the first railroads in such a way that were so clean and formal that it looked as if these massive machines and railways had emerged without trauma to the land around them. He later operated a studio out of Philadelphia that was operated even after his death in 1920.

The composition of the original image is very formal, perfectly centered and balanced. It was a gelatin silver print that is now at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Such prints were once put in presentation albums, photographic exhibitions, and copied by engravers for the illustrated press.

This image is intriguing to me because it a glimpse from what it must of been like to see a train and railroad for the first time and you can feel the train coming toward you. Having said that it is definitely an image of the time and the wonder of the industrial revolution and could be more interesting.

My idea for recreating this image is to show a railroad today, like a flash forward from 1906 to 2011, demonstrating how we have lost that wonder of the railroad. The image was taken at a run down part of Lansing that has an abandoned train station, railroad car and GM plant.