Bookbot

David Mather

    Railway Centre York
    Futurist Conditions
    The Final Years of London Midland Region Steam
    British Industrial Steam Locomotives: A Pictorial Survey
    • 2023

      Italian futurism visualized diverse types of motion, which had been rooted in pervasive kinetic and vehicular forces generated during a period of dramatic modernization in the early 20th century. Yet, as David Mather's sweeping intellectual and art historical scholarship demonstrates, it was the camera-not the engine-that proved to be the primary invention against which many futurist ideas and practices were measured. Overturning several misconceptions about Italian futurism's interest in the disruptive and destructive effects of technology, Futurist Conditions provides a refreshing update to the historical narrative by arguing that the formal and conceptual approaches by futurist visual artists reoriented the possibly dehumanizing effects of mechanized imagery toward more humanizing, spiritual aims. Through its sustained analysis of the artworks and writings of Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, and the Bragaglia brothers, dating to the first decade after the movement's founding in 1909, Mather's account of their obsession with kinetic motion pivots around a 1913 debate on the place and relative import of photography among traditional artistic mediums-a debate culminating in the expulsion of the Bragaglias, but one that also prompted a range of productive responses by other futurist artists to world-changing social, political, and economic conditions.

      Futurist Conditions
    • 2022

      David Mather has brought together a collection of his images which represents York's railway heritage from its earliest days through to the present.

      Railway Centre York
    • 2021

      The first steam locomotives used on any British railway, worked in industry.The use of new and second hand former main line locomotives, was once a widespread aspect of the railways of Britain.This volume covers many of the once numerous manufacturers who constructed steam locomotives for industry and contractors from the 19th to the mid 20th centuries.David Mather has spent many years researching and collecting photographs across Britain, of most of the different locomotive types that once worked in industry.This book is designed to be both a record of these various manufacturers and a useful guide to those researching and modelling industrial steam.

      British Industrial Steam Locomotives: A Pictorial Survey
    • 2020