South Buffalo | Tracking the Light

Buffalo, Autumn 1988.

The other day, I was searching for some images for a book project, and I discovered a long lost yellow box of Kodachrome slides.

In the 1980s, normally, I was pretty good about labeling my slides. This box simply read, “Buffalo unlabled”.

I thought, “uh oh, what’s this . . . ”

Like, pirate’s treasure!

I’d managed to stamp my name on each slide. And, back in the day, I removed a couple of choice images to make Cibachrome prints. But other than that this roll was untouched. These haven’t been projected, or printed.

Conrail light engines at CP FW, Buffalo. Exposed on Kodachrome 25 using a Leica M2 with 200mm Telyt lens using a Visoflex.

Unfortunately, my notes from the day also appear to be absent, so some details on railroad operations and exposure data have been lost to time.

The slide mounts are stamped November 1988, but these may have been exposed on October 28^th, as I spent the morning making industrial images around Niagara Falls for a class project at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

I’d walked the old Skyway south of downtown Buffalo to make photos of the steel works. At the time I was impressed by the dramatic lighting on Lake Erie.