Southern Railway 1940

Ernest Hopf made this print, "Southern Railway," using dark ink on paper. I can almost feel the weight of the worker’s body bent over the tracks; his labor depicted through these marks. Can you see how the lines build, hatching over hatching, in a tight, busy rhythm? I bet Hopf knew how to work hard - you can feel the effort in the making. The ground is uneven, things are scattered about, and a kind of no-nonsense mood hangs over everything. The details tell the story: tools scattered by the track, buildings in the distance, and even the railway sleeper texture. It’s a bleak but solid scene. There’s a feeling of industrial progress but at what cost? The piece sits somewhere between Regionalism, Social Realism, and that uniquely American genre of ‘protest art meets documentary photography.’ I wonder who influenced Hopf, and who he went on to influence. The image holds the weight of history, and the history of image-making.