Center for Railroad Photography and Art

Publicationsthe Center publishes a quarterly journal, Railroad heritage, that uses photographs and Art to inform the public about the Railroad's influence on economic growth and development, popular culture, and the lives of the hundreds of thousands of men and women who built, operate, and maintain railroads in north america and beyond. Books add to this message and the Center continues to publish one each year. The title for 2023 is rio grande steam finale: narrow gauge Railroad Photography in Colorado and new mexico. It draws from Photography in many of the Center's collections to showcase the technology, landscapes, and people of the denver & rio grande western Railroad's narrow-gauge lines in Colorado and new mexico in the 1950s and 1960s. These lines took on a larger-than-life mystique for their remoteness and spectacular locations, and also as one of the last bastions of steam-era Railroad. They drew photographers from all over the country, and they remain highly popular today. Released on october 1, 2023, it has enjoyed the strongest sales performance of any Center published book to date.

Conferencesthe Center hosts an annual conference near chicago and sometimes another regional conference in a different city featuring presentations about Railroad Photography and Art. The events give photographers and researchers the opportunity to network and exchange ideas through programming and social activities. Attendees come from all over the united states and several other countries. The 2023 conference sold out with 170 attendees in less than two months; a move to a larger auditorium for the 2024 conference expanded capacity to 192 attendees which also sold out in two months. The Center hosted its first online program in 2020 and now manages a monthly series of online presentations that appear live via zoom and are then recorded and posted to youtube for later viewing. Attendance on zoom ranges from 100 to 400 attendees, while several of the youtube records have received thousands of views.

Collectionsthe Center maintains an archive of more than 500,000 photographs, paintings, drawings, and prints; its staff members perform archival processing of this collection into archival-safe storage materials. Anticipated additions in 2024 and beyond will push the total number of images above 1,000,000. The Center digitizes many of the images as well as their associated metadata, sharing them through its website, social media channels, and publications, while making them available to researchers, authors, and other users. Growth of the collection has led to a substantial increase in image usage requests, and images from the Center's archive now appear frequently in books and magazines by other publishers and authors. One example is the "archives treasure" feature that appears in each issue of classic trains magazine and spotlights a photographer in the Center's archive. The Center's collection is not recorded on the organization's financial statements.collection priorities in 2023 included the ongoing processing of several large and significant collections. The richard steinheimer and shirley burman collection was augmented by a second batch of materials that arrived in december 2023, joining the first batch from june 2022. The Center's collection holdings now contain more than 40,000 slides, prints, and negatives, along with writings and correspondence. Work also continues on the henry posner iii collection, with approximately 40,000 images, the jim shaughnessy collection, estimated at more than 60,000 images, and the john gruber collection, with more than 100,000 images. The Center also accessioned several dozen paintings, drawings, and Art prints in 2023.

The Center's annual creative Photography awards program recognizes creative Photography and provides an important point of entry for engagement with contemporary photographers and new audiences. Named for principal founder john e. gruber, the program seeks to recognize and encourage excellence in Railroad imagery. for 2023, the volunteer panel of three judges, chaired by a board member, split the program into two categories, one for color photographs and one for black-and-white, both around theme of "the role of technology" as it relates both to railroads and imagery of them. The winning images were published in the Center's journal and in railfan & Railroad magazine, and they are currently on display at the Colorado Railroad museum. Exhibits the Center prepares and manages several Photography exhibitions that travel to museums and other venues across the country where they are made available to the public. Exhibitions currently or recently in circulation include after promontory: 150 years of transcontinental railroading; beebe & clegg: their enduring photographic legacy; in partnership with the chicago history museum, railroaders: jack delano's homefront Photography; and requiem for steam: the Railroad photographs of david plowden. In may 2023, the Center partnered with the Colorado Railroad museum in golden, Colorado, on a joint reception in conjunction with their opening of our beebe & clegg exhibition. for the past several years, the Center staff has been working on a new exhibition about the connections railroads have fostered, and continue to foster, through the lens of the rails to trails movement and history of related railroads. Its debut is being planned for fall 2024. Awardsthe Center's annual creative Photography awards program continued unabated in 2021. Named for principal founder john e. gruber, the program seeks to recognize and encourage excellence in Railroad imagery. for 2021, the volunteer panel of three judges, chaired by a board member, split the program into two categories, one for color photographs and one for black-and-white, both around the theme of "three of a kind," encouraging entrants to submit groupings of three images around a visual or narrative theme. The winning images were published in the Center's journal and in railfan & Railroad magazine.