Bruce Jackson is SUNY Distinguished Professor and the James Agee Professor of American Culture at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. His numerous books include American Chartres: Buffalo's Waterfront Grain Elevators; The Story is True: The Art and Meaning of Telling Stories, Second Edition; Ways of the Hand: A Photographer's Memoir; and Voices from Death Row, Second Edition (with Diane Christian), all published by SUNY Press. He lives in Buffalo, New York.
""Bruce Jackson's Great Northern is stunning, both as a work of photography and as an indictment of the public trust gone missing in an American city. The text provides the context for the truth that the photographs reveal: An imposing and beautiful work of nineteenth century engineering was working just as designed and built well into the twenty-first century. Airtight, watertight, resting in a frame of massive steel columns, beams, and trusses—the building was never going to fall down of its own, or nature's, accord. Only venal men could cause that. Over a fall, a winter, and part of a spring, the falsity of the justifications for destruction of this American landmark was painfully evident to anyone who cared to bear witness. Many did. Bruce Jackson has perhaps done it best."" — Tim Tielman, Director, The Campaign for Greater Buffalo History, Architecture & Culture