"Sometimes the electricity fails." Vesuvius, Virginia, 1956, photographed by O. Winston Link:
[Photo: Shorpy/Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division]
Link was the best-known railway photographer of his time, specialising in night-time shots, meticulously set up with powerful floodlights. There's a museum dedicated to his work, in Roanoke, Virginia.
His tragic last years – he lived to the age of 86 – were spent imprisoned by his young wife Conchita in the basement of his house, where he was forced to produce prints of his photos for Conchita to sell, to finance her profligate lifestyle. Or at least that's one version of the story: no one knows for sure. There was a fascinating documentary about it on BBC4 some years back, which I wrote about here.
Mick Hartley 
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