Maude Bows to the Virginia Creeper, Green Cove, Virginia Possibly 1956 - 1983

O. Winston Link made this photograph, “Maude Bows to the Virginia Creeper, Green Cove, Virginia”, sometime in the mid-twentieth century. It’s a black and white photograph, but it’s far from a simple snapshot; it's a carefully constructed scene. The contrast between the billowing smoke of the locomotive and the calm horse is so striking. There’s something about the texture of the smoke that gets me. It's soft and yet solid, like a charcoal drawing almost. It seems so different from the sharp, crisp lines of the train and the building. The tonal range is so rich, from the inky blacks of the smoke to the soft grays of the sky and the horse. The whole image feels staged. But it works, doesn’t it? It's like Link is saying something about time and progress, about the end of one era and the beginning of another. It puts me in mind of some of the work of Edward Hopper, with its quiet, melancholic atmosphere and its feeling of being caught between two worlds. Art is a way of making sense of the world, but it’s also a way of creating new possibilities, new ways of seeing and feeling.