One Track Mind: Photographic Essays on Western Railroading (Masters of Railroad Photography)

Boston Mills Press is proud to launch its Masters of Railroad Photography Series with this phenomenal collection of photographs and essays by Ted Benson. Benson has devoted much of the past 30 years to rail photojournalism and is widely acknowledged as one of the world's top railway photographers. In One Track Mind he presents more than 200 of his finest black-and-white photographs on the topic of western railroading. Benson's photographs speak to the railfan in all of us, with equal measures of timeless human interest and peak-action railroad imagery. Ted Benson has perhaps exceeded his own aspiration, to create a collection of rail photography full of "rare, unexpected pleasures . . . high drama spiced with quiet moments of reflection." These are qualities the reader will find on every page of One Track Mind.

"Why black-and-white in an all-color world? It didn't take long before I began to look at black-and-white as the best way to continue the documentary tradition of American railroad photography that began with the building of the first transcontinental railroad in the 1860s. Continuing through the dawn of the 'railfan era' in the late 1930s and the emergence of such gifted rail photojournalists as Philip Hastings and Richard Steinheimer in the 1950s, black-and-white remains the soul of rail photography."
Ted Benson

This book will probably not interest the rivet counter/roster shot takers, it centers on people, on heartfelt feelings, on the things that matter.

Highly recomended.

Mark Bau END


Several Tracks in his Mind   March 31, 2000
 4 out of 6 found this review helpful

If you're not a fan of railroads and not a fan of photography, you will still enjoy this book. It's no secret Ted's been around, and to some places you wouldn't even believe. However with all these places it's hard to contain it all in a single volume, but Ted has done a wonderful job picking the best and his favorite photographs for the book. Thirteen lucky chapters detail his subjects with a flare and writing that goes down like a bottle of imported beer...nice and smooth! This book is a must for your home library!