Stacey Evans began taking photos from trains more than 20 years ago. What started casually, with a couple of images snapped on a trip, evolved into a serious body of work produced over 44 separate train journeys, along 14 different routes. “Passenger: Riding the Rails” at Second Street Gallery features photographs taken by Evans along the Charlottesville/New York portion of Amtrak’s Northeast Regional line.
For Evans, the word passenger includes the notion that we are all passengers traveling through life. “I realize I’m floating through this universe on a sphere; I’m not in control, nor do I know the final destination,” she says. “I’m a bunch of atoms moving along with everything else. One may wonder why—why are we here? What do we want to leave behind? I don’t have biological kids, I have photographs. I’m a passenger collecting data to leave for the future—at least that’s my hope.”
Evans grew up in the Shenandoah Valley where public transportation was nonexistent, and she was in her 20s when she first boarded a train. As a newbie rail passenger, Evans was attuned to the experience in a way that might elude a more seasoned train traveler…