David Plowden in 2010. He was known for his photos of steam trains and other relics of a fading industrial age. Scott Lothes

David Plowden, Who Photographed a Disappearing America, Dies at 93

With his haunting images of steam locomotives, steel mills and Midwestern farms, the celebrated lensman revealed the poetry in the artifacts of manual labor.

By Alex Williams
June 13, 2026

One day in the early 1940s, David Plowden grabbed his Kodak Brownie box camera and headed to the train depot near his family’s farm in Vermont, accompanied by his mother. He was 11 and fascinated by steam engines — so much so that he often rode the rails and had befriended some of the conductors and engineers.

On that particular day, he looked on in wonder as one of the mighty coal-fired engines approached the station. Such trains were still chugging around the country, although they would soon give way to the diesel locomotive. ... But as the train squealed to a halt, he froze, thrusting the camera into his mother’s hands. As he recalled on his website, he told her: “You take the picture!” ... It was perhaps the last time he missed the shot.


One of Mr. Plowden’s photos, titled “Central Vermont Railway, Locomotive Number 707,” which he photographed in White River Junction, Vt., in 1957. David Plowden

Renowned for his haunting black-and-white paeans to steam trains and other relics of a fading industrial age, Mr. Plowden died on May 4 at a retirement community in Evanston, Ill. He was 93. The cause was a heart attack, his wife, Sandra Plowden, said. ... Unlike O. Winston Link, who was also celebrated for his railroad photography, Mr. Plowden didn’t limit himself largely to trains. His work took in a broad swath of America’s changing landscape in an era of declining industrial dominance.

Starting in 1966 with “Farewell to Steam,” he published more than 20 books of photographs that balanced a vaguely Norman Rockwell-like vision of Americana with moody ruminations on the country’s seemingly endless compulsion to build and then abandon its creations. ... “I have been beset with a sense of urgency to record those parts of our heritage which seem to be receding as quickly as the view from the rear of a speeding train,” he once said. “I fear that we are eradicating the evidence of our past accomplishments so quickly that in time we may well lose the sense of who we are.”


“Canadian Pacific Railway, Locomotive #2816,” was photographed in Montreal, Quebec, in 1960. David Plowden

A disciple of the Depression-era photographer Walker Evans, Mr. Plowden began in the 1960s to aim the lens of his tripod-mounted Hasselblad camera at soot-encrusted steel mills, Great Lakes cargo ships and other prewar industrial artifacts. ... It was a time when American manufacturing was beginning to move overseas and, eventually, to automate. He often joked that he carried out his professional duties “one step ahead of the wrecking ball.” ... Along with the relics of heavy industry, Mr. Plowden lovingly documented rural America with its grain silos and weathered barns, which he saw as symbolic of a more honest era of human labor.


“Steam Traction Engine, Williams Grove, Pennsylvania,” 1963. David Plowden

David Plowden was born on Oct. 9, 1932, in Boston, the elder of two children of Roger Plowden, a British-born actor and set designer, and Mary (Butler) Plowden, a skilled pianist. ... When he was 6, his family moved to an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and he recalled staring out the window in fascination as the steamships and tugboats rolled along the East River. (That fascination was reflected in “Tugboat,” a collection of photographs he published in 1976.)


“Ferryboat Binghamton, Barclay St. Terminal, New York,” 1961. David Plowden

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“Wal-Mart has taken over Main Street,” Mr. Plowden said in a 1996 interview with the Winnetka Historical Society of Illinois. “I’m really trying to show what Wal-Mart has destroyed.”

Alex Williams is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.