The photographer McNair Evans grew up in a small town in North Carolina. During the summers, he worked repairing railroad ties on a local freight line. His photographic work has often explored the connections between landscape and history and psychology, and in the past three years he’s returned to his early connection to the American rail system. For the series “In Search of Great Men,” Evans has taken a series of two-week trips on Amtrak, travelling all over the country to capture the lives of his fellow-passengers during their long-haul sojourns across the continent.

McNair Evans‘ new series, In Search of Great Men, is being presented for the first time by the San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries, running through November 18, 2016, at the San Francisco City Hall: Ground Floor + North Light Court

In the summer of 2011, McNair Evans took a train from Raleigh, North Carolina, where he’d been visiting his girlfriend, to Richmond, Virginia, for a friend’s wedding. The experience was a transformative one.

In 2010 I returned home to photograph the lasting psychological landscape of Dad’s legacy. Retracing my father’s life, I used photography to comprehend its events. Visiting the farms where we hunted, his college dorm rooms, and his oldest friends, I photographed his family members and businesses while researching his character and actions. I could not equate these.