233: O. WINSTON LINK, The Volunteer Fire Department and Train No. 2, Grottoes, Virginia < 20|21 Art: The Chicago Edition, 14 July 2022 < Auctions

Our Dear Mr. Link

Works from the Collection of Joan Pharr Thomas

O. Winston Link. Photos courtesy of Catherine Thomas Boehmcke

Joan Pharr Thomas first met O. Winston Link in 1955. Her step-father Ben Bane Dulaney was an executive with the N&W Railroad, which earlier that year, announced that it would begin converting its steam locomotives entirely to diesel. Pursuing what began as a hobby, Link wrote to Dulaney and requested access to the N&W railyards where he could take photos and sound recordings of the remaining steam engines. Dulaney encouraged Link’s pursuits, and the two became close friends and collaborators—the executive provided access and support as Link chronicled the last days of steam locomotive railroading in the United States.

The wedding of Joan Pharr Thomas shot by O. Winston Link

During his visits to N&W headquarters in Roanoke, Virginia, Link stayed with Dulaney and his family, growing close with Ben’s wife Mary (née Herbert Pharr) and their daughters, Joan and Judy. Joan in particular formed a special friendship with the artist and would often accompany Link on excursions for train watching and sound recording (trips that usually ended over a dish of peppermint ice-cream at the local Howard Johnson’s). Later, Link would accompany Joan on college visits, and photograph life’s milestones (big and small) including her wedding and children. For the last twenty years of his life, Link split time between his home in South Salem, New York and with Joan and her family in Roanoke.

Link at work capturing a sound recording

Before his photography gained widespread recognition however, Link was best known for his sound recordings which were painstakingly captured on a professional eighty-pound monophonic tape recorder with a custom-built portable power supply (an impressive feat considering Link had no prior experience with sound recording). He issued six collections during his lifetime that comprise the Sounds of Steam Railroading series, an important historical record of days past. In 2003, the series was added to the National Registry by the Library of Congress, an auspicious list of recordings deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” As Link was nearing retirement, he called upon the daughter of his old friend Ben Bane Dulaney (Ben wrote the liner notes for Link’s audio work) to take over his sound recording business, and in the early 1990s, Joan Pharr Thomas began the process of restoring and re-mastering Link’s original recordings into a new, digital format. The text included below is copy written by Thomas for the project and describes their long and loving friendship.

Catherine Thomas Boehmcke and her dog Hunter shot by O. Winston Link

The collection of photographic works offered here comes from the family of Joan Pharr Thomas—trustee of the artist’s estate—and includes early, and rare works by the groundbreaking photographer. Each work has been inscribed with a unique provenance identification number (JPT) from the artist’s trust indicating that they come from this important and comprehensive collection. Amassed over their decades long friendship, the selection encompasses Link’s early forays as a commercial photographer, his first attempts at steam engine photography, and the innovative night photography for which he is most well-known and respected. Lovingly maintained and cherished by Thomas’s daughter Catherine Thomas Boehmcke, who remembers Link as a near-constant figure throughout her childhood and adult life, this selection is the culmination of three generations of championing, stewarding and supporting the legacy of O. Winston Link. Thomas best described this sentiment in her audio notes written years ago, “Our dear Mr. Link, artist and poet with a camera and a recorder, it is with deep admiration and respect that we seek to honor you and to thank you for your gifts to us, so beautifully preserved through your photographs and recordings.”

1944, Villamont, Virginia

I was five years old, dozing on the sleeping porch as steam locomotives pounded the Blue Ridge grade. I think I can, I think I can. As the engine struggled to ascend and then descend the steep grade that railroad men called The Hill, I drew reassurance from the children's storyline: I know I can, I know I can.

1955, Roanoke, Virginia

The year of my 16th birthday and the year I met Ogle Winston Link. Little did I know that this affable character from Brooklyn, New York, who drove his Buick convertible all the way to Roanoke, Virginia to photograph trains in the middle of the night, would weave his way into my life and my heart for the next 46 years. I would learn that Winston Link was about much more than pretty pictures of trains. He was engaged in what he later described as an impossibly beautiful love affair with the sights and sounds of Norfolk and Western steam locomotives and life along the line. He had come to us to document, both through his sound recordings and his photographs, what he proclaimed to be a beautiful, vanishing era in American history.

1955-1960

Joan Pharr Thomas shot by O. Winston Link

Winston was often welcomed into our home, as my stepfather, Ben Dulaney, was Director of Public Relations for the Norfolk and Western (N&W) Railway. He was to write the liner notes for all but one of the Link LPs, Sounds of Steam Railroading. Ben died before the production of Volume 6. To Winston, Ben was GSF (Great Stone Face); Mother, whose initials were M.D., was Doc, my sister was Squirt, and my grandmother was, respectfully, Mrs. Herbert. I was too busy being a tenth grader to appreciate the enormity of Winston’s mission. What I did notice, even then, was how focused and passionate he was about everything in his life. That Winston was an unusual presence in our conservative community was confirmed, I thought, when he spent hours in the darkness of our backyard recording the song of a mockingbird. Today, when I listen to the 22 minute segment from volume 4, 2nd Pigeon and the Mockingbird, I hear a symphony and I remember. As Winston continued his recordings, photographs and 16 mm movies, he would occasionally appear, unannounced, at a classroom door during my college years in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Off we would go to Howard Johnson’s Restaurant for a dish of peppermint stick ice cream. He would admonish the waitress not to scrape the crystals off the side of the carton, and then he would burst into the laugh that shook whole rooms. He always left a generous tip.

1960-1992

Joan Pharr Thomas on her wedding day shot by O. Winston Link

His work on the N&W complete, Winston returned to Roanoke to photograph my wedding. He was becoming known for his recordings of steam locomotives at work, but it would be years before his photographs were acclaimed and even longer before this body of work was understood as documentation of an era. At my mother’s funeral a lovely spray of flowers was accompanied by a card that said simply: "I'll Always Love You, Doc." Over the next thirty one years, our friendship continued with visits to my growing family in Virginia, periodic phone calls and letters from New York, and Christmas cards and letters, which usually arrived in January or February.

1992-2001

Our friendship, interrupted from time to time, was renewed as Winston groomed me to take over his sound recording business. He remained my kind and patient teacher until his death in January 2001. Winston Link entrusted to me the formidable task of bringing his extraordinary recordings to life once again. Because the master tapes used to produce the original LP records are missing, his rare original vinyl's and field tapes, all 25 to 50 years old and clearly affected by the ravages of time, have been painstakingly restored, re-mastered and presented in a new format. (The liner notes are presented as originally written. The exception is that Side A and Side B have been replaced with track numbers.) And so, our dear Mr. Link, artist and poet with a camera and a recorder, it is with deep admiration and respect that we seek to honor you and to thank you for your gifts to us, so beautifully preserved through your photographs and recordings. This is your golden time. It is a privilege and a pleasure to deliver to the world the sounds you so lovingly collected all those decades ago. We hope you would be pleased.

—Joan Pharr Thomas