By Stephen Mallon
Located in New York, NY
15"x45" c-print photograph, limited edition of 10 signed upon reverse, depicting a freight train car from the Union Pacific railroad, coated in colorful graffiti. The tagger team collaborated in a writing session on the train car using the same colors, in gradient colors of yellow, orange and pink letters, outlined in blue. The cream white metal sides of the train car are the perfect 'canvas' for the tags some recognized as "Trigz" "Betor" "Croox" "ICR". The photographer, Stephen Mallon, captures this moving train car and its tagged graffiti sides as it travels through the landscape of America, with a bucolic blue clouded sky just behind the railroad freight train car.
This is a limited edition, color photograph by the New York artist, Stephen Mallon, capturing moving freight trains in the United States. This series tracks the still active railroad lines and their rail cars in America, featured in "Passing West".
Front Room Gallery is pleased to present, “Passing West” a solo exhibition of photographs by Stephen Mallon. “Passing West” is a continuation of Mallon’s “Passing Freight” series, a visual celebration of the unique beauty and function of freight train cars in United States. This series of photographs captures the still active rail lines that carry freight to destinations across the country. Mallon’s industrial landscape photographs isolate freight cars within this iconic transportation system, which has played a critical role in supply infrastructure across the continent for hundreds of years. The photos in “Passing West” are framed against the open plains, mountain ranges, and the salt flats— mostly taken during a residency at the Montello Foundation in 2020, in which Mallon travelled the countryside of Utah and Nevada.
Poised against the rugged western landscape Mallon’s photographs of train cars often appear to carry the weight of the mountains themselves. Whether they are covered in graffitti or smartly displaying the rail lines iconic logos, each of these cars are brimming with it’s own individual personality. In one “Hopper” car, the tan car stands in front of the dusty desert mountains, and on it graffitti states “confront my toxic masculinty”. Another car, a yellow caboose with the crimson “Union Pacific” logo on it, would be as comfortable in an episode of “Thomas the Tank Engine” as on the set of “East of Eden”. Some of the open Box cars actually frame the mountains and flats themselves with their rectilinear shapes.
These trains are all moving, quite literally. And while they might appear to be stopped in the photograph, it is only for that split second as they pass Stephen Mallon, his camera, and his tripod. Mallon’s procedure involves many elements including the perfect location, light, the individual personality of each car, the trickiness of getting exactly the right moment, and patience. The intersection of mechanical and natural worlds, singular encounters where the trains activate the landscape are hard to predict.
About Stephen Mallon
Stephen Mallon is a photographer and filmmaker who specializes in the industrial-scale creations of mankind at unusual moments of their life cycles.
Mallon’s work blurs the line between documentary and fine art, revealing the industrial landscape to be unnatural, desolate and functional yet simultaneously also human, surprising and inspiring. It has been featured in publications and by broadcasters including The New York Times, National Geographic, NBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Mail, MSNBC, The Atlantic, GQ, CBS, the London Times...
Category
2010s Contemporary Stephen Mallon
MaterialsPhotographic Paper
