Photographer Sam Botts and Young’s son, J.J. Young III, will now begin to examine and scan thousands of the elder Young’s negatives. Botts says the project will take several years to complete. The Binghamton area images that have already been posted consumed two years of work to make the 800 images available.
Young was born in Wheeling, W.Va., on May 23, 1929 and began taking photographs when he was seven years old in 1936. He worked for the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad before moving in 1959 to Binghamton where he taught photography. After retiring from Broome Technical Community College in Binghamton in 1995, Young relocated to Charleston, where he continued his life-long hobby of photographing trains until his death. Young never had a driver’s license, yet visited all 48 states in the continental U.S. chasing trains.
Young amassed a collection of more than 10,000 images before he passed away in 2004.
Four images from Young’s steam era photography have been added to the Flickr page at www.flickr.com/photos/jjyoungjr.
I’m now approaching six years of work on scanning JJ Young, Jr.’s negatives. There are still thousands to scan, but over 4,700 images are now posted for viewing on the Flickr page linked to above.
Thanks to his family for making these wonderful photos available. I enjoyed them even tho I'm an NYC fan. We are blessed to have such a great set of photos.
To echo what Mr Beardsley said, JJ had a really great handle on the rail action in Binghamton, the Southern Tier, and central NY. He not only got the photos, he also knew the crews and officials, as well as every horse, cow, and goat in Broome, Chenango, and Tioga counties-he was legendary for getting animals to pose in his pictures. I once saw him feed a horse sugar cubes to get the animal into his photo, and we kidded him constantly about his inflatable cows.
Thanks to Liz for letting this marvelous collection be available to all, and to JJ III and Sam for doing the hard, but enjoyable, work of sorting through JJ's art to bring it to us. It's in good hands.
JJ Young, Jr. is John J Young, Jr.
This will be a generous and important legacy. We are all indebted to Mr. Young for capturing these images and his family for their willingness to share it.
Thanks so much to the Young family for doing this! The Binghamton area was "railroad central" in J.J.'s day, and nobody represented it better, in consistently beautiful b&w photography. Gonna be great to see this.
Thanks kindly to those involved for making these photos and info available to all. Most kind and generous. Many of us out here study, enjoy, and even collect vast collections. Let us all do out part for others. Cheers!
This (The James J. Young Photo Library) will a terrific resource along with the John W. Barriger III, Library Photo Collection: Both now on Flickr, as well.