O. Winston Link

(American, 1914–2001)

O. Winston Link was a pioneering American commercial photographer. Best known for his images of steam locomotives, Link is responsible for developing the equipment and techniques that allowed for some of the earliest examples of night photography. Born on December 16, 1914 in Brooklyn, NY, he went on to receive a civil engineering degree from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1937. He developed several new forms of photographic equipment, notably rigging 43 flash bulbs to fire simultaneously so as to capture a steam locomotive at night. Of his preference for shooting after dark and in black and white, he once quipped: “The locomotives are black. The coal is black. The tracks are black. The night is black. So what am I going to do with color?” Today, there is an O. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke, VA dedicated to his photographs, audio files, and video works documenting the last days of steam locomotives along the Norfolk and Western Railway. He died on January 30, 2001 in Katonah, NY.