Synopsis 1
In 1990 Paul Yule created a documentary film about one of America’s greatest photographers:
O. Winston Link. Link, 76 at the time, earned his reputation from photographs of locomotive engines at
night. Shot in the Fifties—the last days of steam engines—these photos have become icons of 20th
century Americana.
In 1983 Link had married Conchita who was twenty years younger than him. As his business manager
Conchita helped to dramatically increase the value of his photographs, while turning Link into a celebrity.
But behind the veneer of success and recognition was a tragic story of deceit, lies and greed with with an
unexpected and sordid twist.
Soon after the completion of that film, it became clear that Conchita had been cheating on Link with
another man, had allegedly terrorized and imprisoned Link in the basement of their home, and had
finally stolen his assets and wealth. Following the widely reported divorce and criminal trial, Conchita
found herself locked behind bars.
The Photographer, His Wife, Her Lover follows this drama behind one of the great art scandals of
modern times. It is also a story about the loss of innocence, about the contrast between what the
photographs present—an America that never was—and the feeding frenzy that these extraordinary
images have left behind.
Link died in 2001 and Yule decided to reconstruct the Link affair by making a new film. The result is a
film focusing on the allusive meaning of “Truth.” Is this a case of fraudulent possession that cleaned out
an old and sick husband? Or a wife incriminated and disinherited by a senile, vengeful and violent
husband backed by a battery of society lawyers?
Synopsis 2
Did Conchita defraud her aging husband, renowned steam train photographer Winston O. Link? Or, did
he exploit her for her business acumen? This convoluted tale of art world profit, deception and crime is
framed by excerpts from a worshipful, biographical film director, Paul Yule made with the protagonists
15 years earlier. Whatever happened, the images—striking night-time photos dramatizing the 1950s
decline of steam railroads—are worth more because of the scandal. The subjects of the film look into the
camera lens and either lie or tell the truth, leaving it to the viewer to untangle the sordid mess of lust,
greed and fine art photography. (FULL FRAME DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL CATALOG)
Festival Selections
2006 Full Frame International Documentary Film Festival
2006 DocAviv International Documentary Film Festival
2005 Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival
Ex-Wife Is Accused of Marketing Photos She Stole
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
May 30, 2003
The former wife of O. Winston Link, a photographer famed for dreamy pictures of trains, spent five years in prison for
stealing 1,400 of his prints. The photos were never found, and throughout her trial and even after her release a year and a half ago,
she never uttered a public word about their whereabouts.
But a recent foray into the art market, the authorities said, has landed her back in jail.
The ex-wife, Conchita Link, 67, and the man she married after Mr. Link's death two years ago were arrested and charged
yesterday with conspiring to sell 31 of the photographs through an antiques dealer in Millerton, Dutchess County, said the
Westchester County district attorney, Jeanine F. Pirro.
The antiques dealer, who was not charged and who cooperated with investigators, put the photos up for sale on the eBay
Internet site for an average minimum price of $5,000, Mrs. Pirro said, below the going rate of $6,000 to $12,000 for one of her
former husband's images on the art market. The dealer did not know about the disappearance of the prints or about Ms. Link's
conviction, she said.
"This is a fascinating example of how you never really get away with it even when you think you got away with it," Mrs.
Pirro said. "I guess she thought the time was safe."
Investigators were led to the prints by Thomas H. Garver, Mr. Link's former agent. Mr. Garver said he regularly surfed
eBay, waiting for the missing prints to pop up. On April 23, he said, he came across an extremely rare Link print and called the
dealer, who confirmed that Ms. Link was the source. "It was this charming and most effective woman who came in the door and
convinced him these prints should be listed," Mr. Garver said.
He said he alerted the district attorney's office, which arranged a sting operation in which an undercover officer posed as a
buyer.
Mr. Link's lawyer, J. Edward Meyer, said he had long expected Ms. Link to try to fence the prints after her former
husband's death on Jan. 27, 2001, at age 86. "She was going to do it," he said. "Greed wins out."
Ms. Link and her husband, Edward Hayes, 63, were held pending arraignment this evening, and did not have a lawyer as of
yesterday afternoon.
Mr. Garver said investigators told him that Ms. Link said the prints had been given to her as gifts. In the past, Ms. Link
never tried to explain the disappearance of the 1,400 prints except to say that Mr. Link had made up the story, said Darien J. Zoppo,
the lawyer who represented her at the criminal trial.
Although the missing photos were prints, not negatives, they are considered valuable because they were made, signed and
stamped by the photographer.
Mr. Link's midcentury photographs of steam engines and railroad towns evoke an era of small-town American innocence
that contrasted starkly with the years of ugly legal battles with Ms. Link, who was convicted in 1996 of stealing the photographs,
worth more than $1 million.
At the time of her sentencing, the photographer said, "In my 81 years, I have never met nor heard of anyone more evil than
her."
The couple began their public fight in 1992 with a divorce and related civil action. They exchanged charges of physical
and psychological abuse. Mr. Link said she had turned him into a virtual prisoner by forcing him to make prints in the basement. He
eventually won a $5 million judgment against her for taking prints, photographs, antique coins and other valuables, Mr. Meyer said.
At the criminal trial that followed, gallery owners testified that she had tried to deceive them into thinking Mr. Link had
Alzheimer's disease, so she could take control of his business affairs. At her sentencing, Ms. Link said she did not know where the
1,400 prints were. She maintained that position even when asked about them while in state prison, Mr. Meyer said.
"Winston's greatest focus at the end of his life was to recover what had been stolen from him by his wife," the lawyer said.
"I just wish he was alive today to see this."
He said he hoped a bargain could be struck with her, for leniency in return for the other prints. Ms. Link faces four more
years in state prison if convicted.
Ms. Link and Mr. Hayes, a consultant to gravel and asphalt companies, lived in Gettysburg, Pa., the district attorney said.
Mr. Zoppo, her former lawyer, said she had relatives in Millerton.
Mr. Link chronicled the waning years of the steam train, from 1955 to 1960, taking painstakingly lighted black-and-white
pictures of the Norfolk & Western Railway in the Shenandoah Valley and coal towns of the Allegheny Mountains. He returned to
commercial photography after the railroad retired its last steam engine.
"His pictures are much more than railroads," said Robert Mann, owner of the Robert Mann Gallery in Manhattan, which
exhibited Mr. Link's work. "They're about a whole generation, a whole period of American life in the 50's."
"If in fact it means all the stolen Winston Link photos have been discovered, it's going to be a great day in photography,"
he said.
The 31 prints that were recovered were emblematic of Mr. Link's work. They included the image titled "Hotshot
Eastbound, Iaeger, West Virginia," Mr. Meyer said. The 1956 photograph shows cars at a drive-in in front of a movie screen
showing an airplane, as a locomotive steams by in the background. "It's pretty much the quintessential Winston Link," Mr. Mann
said.
Trove of Stolen Photos Is Found After Arrest of Creator's Ex-Wife
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
May 31, 2003
Westchester County investigators yesterday found a huge cache of photographic prints by O. Winston Link, a master
portraitist of steam trains in small-town America, after arresting his ex-wife on a charge of trying to sell some of his stolen works.
Several hundred of the prints were from a batch of 1,400 that prosecutors said were stolen by Mr. Link's ex-wife, Conchita Link,
according to the Westchester County district attorney, Jeanine F. Pirro.
Ms. Link had been convicted and imprisoned for five years for the theft, but was re-arrested on Thursday. She was charged
with conspiring to sell 31 of the prints on the eBay Web site through a dealer in Millerton, N.Y. Her husband, Edward Hayes, was
also arrested.
Mrs. Pirro said a search of the couple's home in Gettysburg, Pa., led to the discovery of the prints. Detectives found a
receipt there for a self-storage warehouse in Hamilton Township, Pa., near Gettysburg.
A search of a storage space turned up 1,350 Link prints, Mrs. Pirro said. Many of them were not even known to have been
missing, she said. About 200 were from the 1,400 that Ms. Link was convicted of stealing. The prints are considered valuable
because they were made by the photographer himself. "This is a piece of Americana," Mrs. Pirro said. "They can never be duplicated
or replicated."
Most of the prints depicted the steam engines that Mr. Link photographed in the 1950's, the body of work that brought him
acclaim starting in the 1980's as a chronicler of a slice of mid-century American life. Signed, stamped prints by Mr. Link now sell
for $6,000 to $12,000.
Mrs. Pirro said the material recovered from the warehouse included negatives of Mr. Link's commercial work and images
of bridge construction. There were also some rare color images. Mr. Link's best-known pictures were shot in black and white.
Ms. Link, 67, and Mr. Hayes, 63, were arraigned in Westchester County, in Town Court in Yorktown, on Thursday night. Bail for
her was set at $250,000 and for him at $50,000, Mrs. Pirro said. She said they were still in custody as of Friday afternoon, and Ms.
Link would be likely to be kept in jail because she was on parole at the time of her arrest.
More charges against them are expected, the district attorney said, and investigators would continue to look for other
missing photographs.
The Links became embroiled in a highly public and contentious legal battle in the early 1990's. Mr. Link, who lived in
South Salem and died at age 86, accused his wife of keeping him a virtual prisoner, exploiting his efforts and stealing his work. Ms.
Link was convicted in 1996 of the theft and paroled in 2001. She has said she has no knowledge of the missing photographs.
Westchester police recover 31 missing Links
By BILL HUGHES
(Original publication: May 30, 2003)
WHITE PLAINS — Renowned railroad photographer O. Winston Link's former wife, who spent five years in
prison for stealing more than 1,400 of his photographs, was arrested yesterday after 31 of his prints were put
up for sale on the Internet.
Conchita Link, 67, who was paroled in October 2001 after serving the minimum term of a 6 1/2 to 20year sentence for grand larceny, was arrested by detectives from Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine
Pirro's office yesterday and charged with conspiracy, along with her boyfriend, Edward Hayes, 63.
The two were living together in Gettysburg, Pa., and had contacted an antiques dealer in Millerton,
N.Y., who put the photographs on the online auction site eBay.com. Link, who gained worldwide attention in
the late 1960s for his photography of steam trains and railroad-related imagery, died in January 2001 at age 86
of a heart attack suffered near the Metro-North train station in Katonah.
"It was an alert person who ended up calling our office, and we then pursued it," Pirro said. "The
dealer cooperated with us — he had no idea that these prints were stolen. So now, we're in possession of 31
of the prints of the original 1,400 for which she went to jail and that were never recovered."
The alert person was Winston Conway Link, Link's son by his first wife, said Salem Tamer, one of the
trustees of Link's estate. "We've always believed she knew where the prints were, and we've always been
watching, waiting for them to resurface," said Tamer, a friend of O. Winston Link's for more than 50 years. "We
saw that they were being offered by someone in Millerton, and there was a woman calling herself Mrs. Hayes
involved. We knew right away it was her. Hayes was her boyfriend before she went to prison, and she has a
son-in-law in Millerton."
Link's brother, Albert Link Jr. of Granite Springs, said that while he was surprised to hear about
Conchita's arrest, he believed she was guilty all along. "I never had any doubt in my mind," he said. "But I
didn't think she would be that stupid to sell them on eBay."
During Conchita Link's 1996 trial, she was accused of stealing more than $1 million worth of photos, coins,
stamps and artwork from the Lewisboro home the couple once shared. O. Winston Link was the
prosecution's star witness and read a statement at her sentencing, saying, "I have never met nor heard of
anyone more evil than her."
Darien Zoppo, her defense attorney at that time, questioned whether the stolen prints ever existed
and suggested that Link's bitterness toward his ex-wife clouded his testimony.
Link's efforts to restore a steam train he bought from the Canadian Pacific brought his ex-wife and
Edward Hayes together, according to Link's attorney, J. Edward Myer. Hayes ran a locomotive restoration
business out of Rome, N.Y., and Link hired him to restore the train he bought.
"He paid over $100,000 to Ed Hayes for renovation purposes and never saw any result from the
money he put into it, and parts were stolen," said Myer, who added that he obtained judgments against
Hayes and Conchita Link that the estate has been trying to collect for several years.
Link tried to broker a deal with his ex-wife while she was in prison to recover the stolen prints. She
denied stealing them or knowing where they were.
"I just wish that Winston was alive to witness this because it was his fondest dream before he died
that his art and treasure would be recovered," Myer said. "And it looks like it is being recovered."
Pirro said she expects that additional charges will be filed, including parole violation.
Candace Perich, an art dealer with a gallery in Katonah, said the most recent display of his work
opened there Saturday and is running for the next month.
"Everyone who knows Winston has vowed to keep an eye out for just this kind of thing," Perich said. "I'm just
boggled that she would be that dumb."
Paul Yule’s Filmography
The Photographer, His Wife, Her Lover
The Last Waterloo Cup
Not Cricket – The Basil D’Oliveira Conspiracy
Here’s One We Invaded Earlier
Mugabe’s Secret Famine
The House of War
The Marquis de Sade – Pornographer or Prophet?
Battle for the Holocaust
Babitsky’s War
Welcome to Armageddon
In The Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin
Lone Star Hate
Elgar’s Tenth Muse
Geiger Sweet, Geiger Sour
White Lies
Good Morning Mr. Hitler!
Return to the Sacred Ice
As American As Apple Pie
Damned In The USA
O. Winston Link – Trains That Passed In The Night
Mario Vargas Llosa – The Novelist Who Would Be President
Iquitos
Our God The Condor
Martin Chambi and the Heirs of the Incas
2005
2005
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2003
2003
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1986
THE MARVELLOUS MR LINK
BY LYNN HILDITCH
Last night (4th January 2006) BBC4 screened Paul Yule’s fascinating documentary The Photographer, His Wife and Her
Lover focusing on the bizarre and longwinded court case between the American photographer O. Winston Link and his
wife Conchita. The case resulted in his wife being jailed for fraud and theft of Link’s work to sell for her own gain.
However, besides the controversy which sadly surrounds his photographic career, Link created some of the most stunning
and technically ingenuous black and white photographs of the 20th Century and has been described by John Szarkowski,
former Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as “One of nature's noble men, and a
legitimate American genius and nut.”
Ogle Winston Link was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1914. He attended
Brooklyn Polytechnic where he studied Civil Engineering. His interest in
photography began with his father, a public school teacher and craftsman, who
introduced his son to the technical side of the medium. Link’s interest and
knowledge in technology resulted in the building of his own enlarger while he
was still at High School. After graduating he worked for the public relations
agency Carl Byior and Associates as a photographer for five years before leaving
in 1942 to work for a laboratory run by Columbia University which was doing
secret war research. The lab, located in Long Island, New York, backed up to
the tracks of the Long Island Rail Road. Link had begun photographing steam
trains in Jersey City when he was 14 year old but had been unable to
photograph them at this time due to the strict wartime censorship. He also
realized that the major problem in photographing steam trains was getting the
lighting correct. As Link once said, “You can't move the sun, and you can't
even move the tracks, so you have to do something else to better light the
engines.”
Following the war, Link became a freelance photographer. However,
through connections he had made at Byior with contacts such as
Texaco, American Petroleum Institute, and B. F. Goodrich, he
received work documenting industrial processes. As with his
photographs of steam trains, Link found these dark factory scenes
extremely difficult to photograph because they required great
lighting skill.
In 1955, Link went to Staunton, Virginia, to take photographs of an
air conditioning factory. He knew that the Norfolk & Western
Railway, passing through nearby Waynesboro, was the last large
American railroad to operate exclusively with steam power. He
returned the next night with his flash equipment and, with the
cooperation of the station agent, made his first photograph of the
N&W at night. The photograph was so successful that Link sent a
print to the Public Relations Department of the railroad, asking
permission to photograph the railroad and its workers. Link made
about 20 trips to the N&W's tracks in Virginia, West Virginia,
North Carolina, and Maryland over the next few years, producing
about 2,400 images - most of them on sheets of 4x5 film with a
Graphic View Camera. The resolution and quality from this type of
equipment was excellent allowing him to capture intricate mechanical detail. However, dieselization meant that Link had
to work quickly as one division after another converted to diesel power.
What makes Link unique is that most of his photographs were taken at
night using large, homemade lights and flash equipment to illuminate
the scene because he wanted to be able to control as much of it as
possible. One of the particular skills he brought to these night time
railroad photographs was his background as a civil engineer, enabling
him to capture speeding locomotives in a way never accomplished
before. Earlier, large-scale night time photographs had been made using
"open flash" flashbulbs, in which the camera's shutter was opened, the
flashbulbs fired, and the shutter closed. This process worked only if
nothing in the photo was moving, but with the equipment Link built,
he could stop the motion of a train moving at 60 miles an hour. Link
had special flash reflectors built, one of which could hold up to 18
bulbs, for lighting huge areas. He used a power supply which could fire
60 flashbulbs at once, along with the shutters of three cameras, all
perfectly synchronized. The flash unit's cameras and power supply were
connected by wires, and Link carried thousands of feet of it in a trailer
towed behind his car. Some photographs could take from several hours
to six days to set up, and there was only one opportunity to get the shot
as the train sped by.
Link was particularly interested in capturing the interaction between people in their environments and the railroad and
combined the two to create unique pieces of Americana. Nadia Marks describes Link’s images as “Everyday scenes,
everyday lives, but always with the same backdrop of the massive steam locomotives that passed through these towns”.
Probably his signature photograph is "Hotshot Eastbound," shot at a drive-in movie theater in Iaeger, West Virginia in
1956.
The last of the N&W's steam locomotives were
taken out of service in May, 1960, and Winston
returned to New York to continue his work as a
commercial and industrial photographer. He
first became known for his high quality sound
recordings of steam locomotives, releasing the
first of six recording, "Sounds of Steam
Railroading," in 1957, years before his N&W
photographs became recognised. It was only in
1983 that his photographs began to receive
credit as works of art. Whether you believe the
allegations made in the documentary that Link
was a schizophrenic manic depressive who held
grudges towards anyone who upset him, or that
he was a racist and wife beater, or a
manipulator who took revenge on his wife by
accusing her of stealing his prints, or a weak
invalid who was held captive in the basement
his own home by his wife in order to make
hundreds of prints for her to sell, what we do know is that Link was an artistic genius who created some of the most
stunning black and white images and pieces of Americana of the 20th Century.
O. Winston Link died of a heart attack outside a railway station on 30th January 2001 aged 83 – a poetic ending to a
colourful life.
Sources:
Paul Yule, “The Photographer, His Wife and Her Lover”, BBC4, 4th January 2006.
Nadia Marks, “Steamy Passion”, RPS Journal, Volume 145, Number 8, October 2005.
The O. Winston Link Museum website at www.linkmuseum.org