Duncan McEvoy: Post Soviet Trains

In-person meeting.

Duncan explains that his trainspotting childhood grew into photography with the purchase of a 35mm Practika SLR from a fellow platform ender with his Christmas money, age 14. Soon photography became the main direction in his passion for the Railway. Working Steam Locomotives followed as a wage allowed for more distant travel, including China and Poland, both then not long out from behind the Iron Curtain.

Years later, a chance viewing of a short film made in Moldova made him look again. Slow smoking trains, commuters steeping down from it with their work gear in carrier bags, concrete accommodation blocks, undergrowth everywhere. He went there in 2015, and since then to Ukraine five times, then Russia. The Post Soviet Project was on. A photographic bridge between Europe and Asia. Then Covid fell upon us to be followed by a war. The project stalled. But wait, look, a back door…Central Asia. Kazakhstan has since been visited three times. The heaviest of industry, metal, coal, minerals. Big holes and billowing smoke. It is tragically beautiful.