Katie Edwards
She took a 10,000-mile trip across the USA, capturing landscapes from a train window. Niall Hampton discovers the inspiration behind her epic project
Katie Edwards
Photographer
Based in the UK, Katie Edwards is an emerging photographer with a portfolio captured around the globe.
Subjects include documenting the traditional transgender community in Fiji to reformed terrorists in Indonesia.
Her images and stories are regularly featured by publications such as The Guardian.
Instagram: @katiedwards
How’s this for a novel take on capturing the vastness and variety of the USA?
Katie Edwards and her father booked an epic train trip across the country last summer, during which Edwards photographed the changing views from the windows in the vestibule areas of the carriages. The photos she captured as the trains rattled along from the east coast to the west and back again can be seen in an exhibition at London’s Observatory Photography Gallery, until 25 January 2025.
Edwards and her dad had an efficient way of working together during their journey; he was positioned further forward on the train and acted as a spotter, relaying information to her via walkie-talkie. But there was more to this innovative photography project than finding pleasing scenes and trying to capture them before they disappeared. To discover more about this near-10,000mile trip and its thousands of captures, we had a phone call with Katie Edwards…
How would you summarise your journey so far – what was your route into becoming a photographer?
I started taking pictures when I was a child but only began to take it seriously when I was at university, shooting small events to give me an extra source of income. So my photographic journey started off commercially – it took quite a while for me to be confident enough in myself to do more artistic projects, and I’d say that Portrait of America is the first piece of work that I’m really happy with, that I’ve managed to finish properly.
Did you study photography formally?
No, I’m self-taught.
Where did the idea of photographing landscapes through train windows come from?
On a train journey to the Lake District, I went to stand by the door before my stop. As the vestibule is darker than outside, the view from the bright, small window was highly contrasted against the interior. I pulled out my camera and took a shot, and was surprised to see that the misty lanes and rolling hills had been captured perfectly in the dark frame. From that moment, I made sure I had my camera with me on every train trip. I learned that using a long lens was best, standing as far from the window as possible, with an aperture of f/2.8 for a soft frame edge, and a shutter speed of 1/8000 sec to make everything crispy sharp.