Conrail Yard, Palmer, Massachusetts 1989

This gelatin silver print of a Conrail train yard in Palmer, Massachusetts, was made by James Welling. I wonder what Welling was thinking, standing there, perhaps on a bridge, looking out at the receding rails and the buildings receding into the distance. There's something about the graininess of the image, the way the black and white tones bleed into one another, that reminds me of a dream. Like something remembered, but just out of reach. The light looks flat, or maybe just overcast. It's hard to tell whether the train is moving or still, but either way there's a sense of movement to the picture, a feeling of going somewhere, or having just arrived. And that's what I love about images like this, they capture a moment in time but also suggest something larger, something beyond the frame. The composition leads the eye, like a landscape, along the rails into the distance.