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Telegraph Office at Main Railroad Station, San Luis, Argentina
Creator
Jim DowAmerican Photographer · 1942–present
All works by this person →> My interest in photography centers on its capacity for exact description. . . . I use photography to try to record the manifestations of human ingenuity and spirit still remaining in our country's everyday landscape. > > --Jim Dow Jim Dow's interest in those places where people enact their everyday rituals, from the barbershop to the baseball park, has guided the path of his photographic career.
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- negative 1988; print 1996
- Medium
- Chromogenic print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
The old-fashioned telegraph equipment, quartz clock, and bound ledger notebook in this railroad office suggest that this photograph was made long before the era of fax machines and computers, yet Jim Dow photographed the scene in 1988. Though an open ledger and a white coat casually hanging on a chair imply someone's recent presence, and unexpected departure, the vacant scene is replete with mystery. The image lacks any obvious connection to a particular place or to the railroad; the telegraph and clock, however, evoke the railroad's legacy as a driving force in the development of long distance communication and standardized time.
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