Ward Kimball Headstand

Among the discoveries in the newly available Life Magazine photo archives is this headstand by Ward Kimball during one of his steamups in the late-1950s. (A larger version is here). There are also a couple other photos from the same day: a nice panoramic shot and this one which includes Ward’s railroading friend, Gerald Best, standing on the ground and wife Betty and son John on the train with him.

(On a sidenote, the poor set-up of the Life photo archives on Google is incredibly frustrating. Many of the photos are uncaptioned–like these Kimball ones–or in some cases, incorrectly identified. They really should start allowing the public to tag and annotate the images. For example, wouldn’t it be nice for everybody to know that the artists standing with Walt in this photo are Ham Luske and Ward Kimball. A collection of images that can’t be properly searched doesn’t serve much function.)