Showing porters pushing a luggage cart on a snowy train platform on the American high plains, the snow effect of this photograph is heightened by the artists skillful manipulation of the bromoil process in order to emphasize the mood of “white out” conditions.

The artists love of print toning creates an alternate version here. This bromoil print has been heavily toned blue, and the photographer has gone in with a fine brush to add yellow highlights to the telephone and or telegraph poles that frame the activity at the center of the composition. He has further embellished with yellow the frames of a lineup of luggage carts lined up in the background. This is a more uncropped version of a monochrome example held by this archive. The work most likely dates to the mid to late 1920’s, although it appeared in print in the early 1940s- see below.

Writing in the History of Photography, author Christian A. Peterson weighs in on this photograph:

His last known reproductions appeared in the December 1943 issue of Popular Science, illustrating an article by him on toning. Most striking among them was ‘Winter at the Station’ (figure 12), which showed a bleak, snow covered landscape under an ashen sky. Alternatively titled ‘Dakota Weather’, this image was probably made at a train stop on the Great Plains, on one of Blumann’s many trips to professional conventions. It reflects both his known adversity to travel and an understandable longing for the milder weather of California.  (1.)

1. Excerpt: “Sigismund Blumann, California Editor and Photographer,” pp. 69-70-by Christian A. Peterson; History of Photography, vol. 26, no. 1 (Spring 2002)  (illustrated with halftone of Winter at the Station.)