Dana Hoey

My brother Bart took this photograph with his I-Phone when he traveled across the U.S. by train. Reviewing his pictures was completely different than an old time vacation slide show.  First of all, he took the bad ones out.  Also, Kodachrome color is gone, replaced by an evanescent, slightly digital glow. Every picture is in motion, and most use the snow’s dark presence to articulate speed.  There are other wonderful pictures of snow-topped crags cut off at the bottom by blurred gray trees.  But this one made me think of something my photo history teacher Shelley Rice once said:  photography developed at the same time as locomotive travel, so people’s vision of the world literally exploded from fast train rides and images from far afield.  When you are on a train, another train going by sounds like an explosion.  I wonder if the torqued cars going by hold flammable liquids?