In this episode of Talking Pictures, our guest is artist Charlie Hunter. Join us for a lively and informal conversation about his wonderfully evocative paintings of railroad subjects.
Talking Pictures is a video podcast that features artists and photographers in a discussion of their own images, or pictures that they find inspirational or meaningful. The focus is on the images, not on the technical aspects of photography.
Edd Fuller, Editor
There is nothing as American as the mythological old west. A staple of the silver screen since the dawn of cinema, the wide-open spaces and big sky are as much a part of Americana as baseball and apple pie.
Even in this day and age of wireless communications, superhighways and urban sprawl, the spirit of the Old West of the American mythos can still be found. The descendants of the railroads that pushed an advancing nation into the west are still as much a part of the scene as they were when pioneering photographers such as William Henry Jackson first trained their lenses on a smoking 4-4-0.
Standing at the summit of Raton Pass on the Colorado / New Mexico border, the southern Rockies can look almost as untouched by western civilization as they did a century and a half ago. Almost, in this view, but for the former Santa Fe mainline at Wooten, Colorado.
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When you live up on a hill above the river and the city stretches out below, there’s a few sounds you get used to, like auto noise from the freeway, the scream of late night motorcycle races, planes, helicopters, trains and on Sunday mornings, the sound of church bells. There are at least half a dozen churches within hearing distance and all ring their bells on the sabbath day. Easter in 2020, of course, was very different what with most of them closed due to “the Covid” as it is known around here. No bells were heard, and an eerie silence pervaded.
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I was so happy when I bagged a photograph at Devil’s Gate taken in the snow with a narrow-gauge train crossing the bridge. Just think, Memorial Day was coming up and winter was not planning on leaving anytime soon.
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The sound could fool you into believing you’re hearing the ebb and flow of the lake’s waves breaking on shore, if not for the almost-alien whirring vibration. The thud-thunk, thud-thunk, the whispering whoooooosh, and the pulsating squeal of compressed metal on metal.
As a first time visitor to this city of towers and glass, one cannot help but be awed by the commotion above sidewalks and between infamous skyscrapers. These steel lines are the bones and the L is the soul of this city. Without it, this windy mecca would not exist as it appears today.
Nowhere in the world, does the melting pot of America appear more obvious than on the benches of the waiting platforms. One glance presents you with society in all of its glory. Class cannot exist here, as bodies press together in the hustle of our fast-paced lives.
Read moreGreat photographs help us see things in new ways, and reveal things that might otherwise remain hidden, or escape our notice. This is, of course true of all art.
Edward Hopper was an American painter who lived from 1882 until 1967. and his work has had a profound influence on the visual arts over the years. Photographers often cite him as an inspiration for their own work.
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