Locomotive on Trestle
Artist
Andrew Joseph Russell
(American, 1830 - 1902)
Dateca. 1863
MediumAlbumen print
DimensionsImage, sheet, mount: 6 1/16 × 8 inches (15.4 × 20.32 cm)
Credit LineGift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.
Object number2005.27.467
Signednone
InscribedOn mount verso, upper left corner, in pencil: "[illeg.] ...build";
On mount verso, upper left, in pencil: "illustrated in / "Matthew Brady: / Historian with / a Camera" By / James D. Horan / Pl.287".
MarkingsOn mount verso, upper right, in pencil: "L278"
On View
Not on viewCollections
DescriptionImage of a train in the center of a bridge that is supported with cross-braced framework. A man wearing a suit, long jacket, and top hat looks toward the train from the grassy landscape below. Several other men appear on, near, and below the train.Gallery LabelAndrew Russell recorded this temporary bridge trestle while working for the Bureau of U.S. Military Railroads. A captain in the 141st New York Volunteers, Russell was also an artist and spent three months learning the wet collodion process. This technique was cumbersome and challenging. Russell hauled a portable darkroom and wrestled with fluctuating heat and humidity as he coated glass plates with a viscous substance (collodion), immersed them in a bath of silver nitrate, and exposed the wet plates in a camera to produce negatives. Russell soon became proficient as a photographer, documenting bridge engineering, train wrecks, and other subjects of military interest.
Vincent Virga et al., Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States (New York: Knopf, 1997): 174.
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Andrew Joseph Russell
May 3, 1863
2005.27.277
