The photographs of Finley Taylor

21 Photos

The early 20th Century photographs of Finley Taylor, from the timber boomtown of Richwood, W. Va., captured the hard life of logging crews and their families as men and horses harvested trees from 350,000 acres of hardwood forest over a 30-year period. After a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad spur reached Richwood in 1901, hundreds of immigrant families settled the area and logging companies established camps in the wilderness. Richwood became home of the largest clothespin factory in the world. Taylor, a studio photographer, based in Richwood, lugged a Rochester field camera into the woods to capture the life of loggers. His photos are the subject of three books published over the last year, “Last Photographers,” by Mark Romano of Cowen, W. Va. Romano, a photographer and teacher of photography, has collected thousands of Taylor’s glass negatives and prints.