Michael Portillo has just started another set of US railway journeys. This time around the north-eastern part of the country…Boston etc.
I know these are simply cheap TV…he sits on a train, talks to the people on the train, and gets off to speak to people who want some free advertising.
The amazing thing, is that this is all quite interesting in a small-town American way…
Ths was in today’s Guardian, and is from a piece about the graohic culture of North Korea…
Here is a three-panel coloured woodcut from Japan. It shows the the first train to leave Yokohama. The print is from the late 19C.
I’ve always liked the graphic style of these images. I love the way the flat-colour 2D shapeshift into 3D and space…and that these images help invent the modern poster and the psychedelic experimentation of the 1960s.
I’ll be posting a few more railway themed images from Japan.
Here is a lovely picture of a steam loco, just like a ghost…
The French photographer, Robert Doisneau, has taken lots of pictures of the French railways…some of these were official, others were more informal.
This is an image of holidaymakers in la France profonde, circa 1940 it turns out.
I was amazed to find that the station, in the middle-of-nowhere, is Carlux, in the Dordogne. I know Carlux because my family have a house there. It is a tiny village, and I can confirm that it is, indeed, in the middle-of-nowhere.
Even more amazingly, Doisneau loved the area and had holidays there over a long period.
Who knows, I might even have seen him when I was small…
I wish I’d known that then.
PS I’ve been researching into Doisneau and the Dordogne…it turns out that he visited the area over a number of years and took photos of Sarlat and Souillac..and worked for the foix gras producers, Rougie. I’ll check it all out.
I looked more closely at the photo too. Look at the track; not many trains going through.
