West Portal of Twin Tubes, Detroit River Tunnel, though which Michigan Central trains run, Detroit, Mich.
Not on view
From Birmingham to Wilkes-Barre and beyond, souvenir postcards celebrated new construction and natural bounty. Tunnel and furnace scenes were local touchstones in the early twentieth century, exchanged in much the same way as seaside pictures or mountain views. This and many other examples hail from the archive of photographer Walker Evans, who avidly collected all manner of photolithographic cards. The industrial scenes he favored deploy a frontal style and a frank economy of means. Like his own photographs, they record a vernacular American idiom with unvarnished regard.
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