The Railroad Photography of Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg

Tony Reevy

Description

Bon vivant, railroad historian, photographer, pioneering food critic, chronicler of New York's café society, and noted newspaperman, Lucius Beebe (1902–1966) was an American original. In 1938, with the publication of High Iron: A Book of Trains, he transformed the world of railroad-subject photography forever by inventing the railroad picture book genre. In 1940, he met creative and life partner Charles Clegg (1916–1979), also a talented photographer. Beebe and Clegg produced an outstanding and diverse portfolio of mid-twentieth century railroad-subject photographs. Beebe, sometimes with Clegg, also authored about forty books, including many focused on railroads and railroading.

The Railroad Photography of Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg brings their incredible story and best photographic work together. Providing an extensive biographic introduction to Beebe and Clegg, author Tony Reevy presents a multi-faceted view of the railroad industry that will appeal to rail enthusiasts as well as those interested in American food culture, the history of New York City, and LGBT studies. The Railroad Photography of Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg is an indispensable history to the work of two men who forever changed the way we see and experience American railroads.

Preface

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Jim Shaughnessy

Introduction

1. The Three-Quarters Shot

2. A Modernist View of the American Railroad

3. Railroaders

4. The Railroad in Its Environment

Appendix: Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg: Technical Details of Their Photography

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Loisirs
• Collections photographiques
• Photographie Créative
• Pictorial
• Railroads
• Transportation
• Historical
• Nueva York
• Charles Clegg
• Lucius Beebe
• Virginia City, Nevada
• Zerbe
• General officer
• Rail transport
• Virginia City
• General
• LGBT
• San Francisco
• New York

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9780253036704
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

THE RAILROAD PHOTOGRAPHY OF
LUCIUS BEEBE AND CHARLES CLEGG

This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2019 by Tony Reevy
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Reevy, Tony, author. | Shaughnessy, Jim, writer of foreword.
Title: The railroad photography of Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg / Tony Reevy ; foreword by Jim Shaughnessy.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, 2018. | Series: Railroads past and present | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018019393 (print) | LCCN 2018021016 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253036704 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253036674 (cl : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Photography of railroads--United States. | Railroads--United States--Pictorial works. | Beebe, Lucius, 1902-1966. | Clegg, Charles, 1916-1979.
Classification: LCC TR715 (ebook) | LCC TR715 .R44 2018 (print) | DDC 779/.9385--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018019393
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18
TO LINDLEY AND IAN
and
In memoriam,
JIM SHAUGHNESSY
1933-2018
Jim, who wrote the foreword for this book,
passed away just as it went to press. He was a pioneer of railroad-subject photography, and a friend to many.
He will be missed.
CONTENTS

Preface
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Jim Shaughnessy


The Railroad Photography of Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg

1
The Three-Quarters Shot

2
A Modernist View of the American Railroad

3
Railroaders

4
The Railroad in Its Environment

Appendix: Technical Details of the Photography
Notes
Chronological Bibliography of the Books of Lucius Beebe
Bibliography of Other Works
Index
PREFACE
I am often asked how I got interested in trains. One of the reasons has to do with my late father, a voracious collector of records and used books. He had little or no interest in railroads, but somewhere along the line, he bought a used copy of a book called Highball . The author was a man with the curious and, to a four-year-old, unpronounceable name of Lucius Beebe. I loved the book and remember spending many hours looking at it while lying on our living room floor. Dad finally gave me the book; I still have it.
I am by no means alone in having been introduced to railroad photography and writing by Lucius Beebe. In John Gruber s pamphlet, Focus on Rails , noted photographer Ted Benson mentions devoting hours to back issues of Trains and the Beebe books as a teenager. 1 Benson went on to say that he decided to pursue photojournalism as a career after the momentous afternoon in 1962 when I came home from the public library with Lucius Beebe s Age of Steam under my arm. 2 Similarly, in Richard Steinheimer s Backwoods Railroads of the West , Steinheimer mentions that one of the reasons he got interested in trains was stimulation from the gift of two fine photo books at this stage, namely Lucius Beebe s High Iron and Highball -books in which he threw out a great challenge to photographers to capture the sights of steam before the eclipse. 3
In fact, Beebe developed the railroad picture book as we know it today. Therefore, Beebe s first such work, High Iron: A Book of Trains , published in 1938, marks an epochal date in the social history of American railroads. As famed Trains editor David P. Morgan put it in his obituary for Beebe, Thus emerged the man who would enthrall the largest book audience in railroading for more than a quarter century. 4
Who was this man with the curious name, and how did he come to originate a form that has been emulated by George Abdill, E. P. Alexander, Don Ball, Jeff Brouws, Arthur Dubin, O. Winston Link, David Plowden, H. Reid, Jim Shaughnessy, and many others? That is the question explored in the introduction to this book. In the four portfolios that follow, Lucius Beebe s photographs and the images taken by his creative and life partner, Charles Clegg, are profiled.
Beebe and Clegg inspired legions of railroad photographers and authors, and their life together helped establish a place for gay couples in our society. In addition, Beebe chronicled New York during Prohibition and the Great Depression, helping document and popularize caf society. And Beebe s writing helped establish a greater appreciation for fine dining and travel in the United States. These creative and idiosyncratic men have been out of print, even marginalized, for too long. As we recover from the Great Recession and grapple with divisive issues such as same-sex marriage, it is time to rediscover them and their world.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, many thanks to my editor at Indiana University Press, Ashley Runyon; to her predecessor, Sarah Jacobi; and to Assistant Acquisitions Editor Peggy Solic. This book would not have been possible without their interest, their support, and their faith in my work. Thank you also to Jennifer Crane and Nancy Lightfoot.
The introduction is based on my article, Writers of the Rail: Mixed Legacy, by Tony Reevy and Dan Cupper, from Railroad History , which won the 2006 David P. Morgan Article Award from the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society. I thank the then editor of Railroad History , Mark Reutter, and those I interviewed for the article: the late Arthur Dubin, Cornelius Hauck, the late Dick Kindig, Jim Shaughnessy, and John H. White Jr. Thank you also to Jim Shaughnessy, for contributing his wonderful foreword to this book.
This book and the article that preceded it would not have been possible without the help of the staff of the California State Railroad Museum and its library. Ellen Halteman, Cara Randall, Kathryn Santos, and Craig Castleton all provided invaluable assistance. Thank you also to the museum for permission to reproduce the images in this book and the article that preceded it. Many thanks also to the staffs of the university libraries of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Mid-Continent Railway Historical Society, and the Smithsonian Institution for assistance with this work.
Photography books represent a significant financial commitment. The University Research Council of my home institution at the time, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, funded the scanning costs for the images in The Railroad Photography of Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg , and my research in 2015 at the California State Railroad Museum was made possible by a 2014 John H. White Jr. Research Fellowship from the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society. A 2017 Overton Fellowship Prize from the Lexington Group in Transportation History funded the use fees for the images. Funding for the book was also generously provided by Tom Hoback and Rob Krebs.
As always, Jeff Brouws helped show me the way, and my family-Caroline, Lindley, and Ian-showed patience, understanding, and interest as I struggled to engage with Charles Clegg and, especially, Lucius Beebe. Creative and groundbreaking authors and photographers, they are challenging to read and difficult in many ways, from today s perspective, to understand.
FOREWORD
BY JIM SHAUGHNESSY
Lucius Beebe is widely considered to be the father of the railroad photo book as we know it today.
Lucius Morris Beebe was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts, north of Boston, on December 9, 1902, to a well-to-do family that traced its wealth back to the manufacturing of horse saddles for the Union Army during the Civil War. He attended two prep schools and Yale University and was expelled from all three because his style of pranks was not parallel with the school s administrators. He did, finally, graduate from Harvard University and went into the newspaper business, becoming a society editor-an opportunity no doubt related to his knowledge and contacts originating through his family s position. On even routine news coverage assignments, he might show up at the scene of a house fire wearing a top hat and opera cape. Lucius was one of a kind! He became very popular and well known as the society editor of the New York Herald Tribune , covering high-society splendor from just after Prohibition ended into the 1940s.
In addition to his high-society involvements, Lucius Beebe had always had a hidden interest in the Old West and railroads. When challenged to take railroad photographs, he went out, bought a four-by-five-inch Super D Graflex camera, put on his leather boots and Stetson hat, and went trackside.
Train photography at the time, the 1930s, was mostly perfectly posed images of locomotives only-with no other railroad items such as stations, water tanks, bridges, roundhouses, and so on. Very few railroad images showed locomotives in action. Beebe s early work mostly involved the front, three-quarter-angle action shot, or wedge. This involved the train roaring toward the camera with a great plume of smoke or steam rising and the cars strung out in the distance. Beebe was known to visit train crews, pass out a few good cigars, and request that they have the locomotive emit heavy smoke at a specific location on the line ahead, where, of course, he would be located, camera ready. His first railroad book, High Iron, was published in 1938 and featured Lucius s own wedge format images rushing past his camera. The captions for these images were enhanced by his colorful Victorian verbiage-like describing the locomotive being under a pillar of cloud or ap