DARK TERRITORY
Bellows Falls, Vermont
Trains have been with me as long as I can remember. As a boy I built a whole layout in the basement. For thirty years I've been photographing the real thing in one town—the bridges and trestles, the yards and signals, the couplers, the empty track running off into the dark. Most of it made at night, on black and white film. The work isn't finished: it keeps growing.
Two photographers inspired this body of work, and I studied both closely to learn how to make it. From Alfred Stieglitz, the look—the grain, the soft focus, and the idea that a rail yard at night can hold as much beauty as an open landscape. From Robert Frank, the way of seeing—the loneliness of a place no one is watching, the quiet hour when no one is there. I went looking for a town that still held its old face, and I found Bellows Falls. The photographs were made at night with my Leica M6 rangefinders on Kodak Tri-X film. The idea was to make them look and feel as if they had been taken in the 1920s.
The photographs shown here were made in 1995 and 1996. I first came to Bellows Falls in 1994, and I have photographed it ever since—more than ten thousand frames, and I am photographing it still. In 2016 I exhibited this work, among other photographs, in a solo show in the town, with partial proceeds benefiting Preservation Trust of Vermont projects in Rockingham.
Every frame was made on active railroad property with permission—signed waivers and trespass clearance—and in proper safety gear.