Wagner Magazine, our twice-yearly alumni publication, has won a prestigious Gold Award in the CASE District II Accolades Awards program, sponsored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. The magazine was recognized in the B&W Photography category for the inside front cover spread that appeared in the Summer 2011 issue, which presented a photo (below) of Lower Manhattan taken from New York's Upper Harbor in the mid-1940s by Harold H. "Hal" Carstens '50.
"The inside front cover spread of every issue is devoted to a photograph, which we hope has the 'wow factor' that will make readers stop and look, and also read about the contents of the magazine displayed on the photograph," said Wagner Magazine editor Laura Barlament. "For this issue, we searched in a large collection of negatives donated to us a few years ago by the late Hal Carstens. He took these photos during his years at Wagner, 1946–48, with a Kodak Medalist camera. ... This scene shows Lower Manhattan — a sight every Wagner student knows intimately, from campus views and Staten Island ferry trips — in a time before the World Trade Center existed. This photo expresses Wagner College’s connection to New York City, which is key to our current success and to the Wagner educational experience for generations of students."
Carstens, an Englewood, N.J. native, served with the Army in the Philippines during World War II, where he took courses in journalism. His camera of choice was the durable, medium format Kodak Medalist. “Built like a tank,” as one user described it, the Medalist was known to military photographers as the “American Leica.” Carstens attended Wagner College after WW2. He served 11 years on the college's board of trustees — two years as secretary (1986, 1987) — and received the Alumni Achievement Award from Wagner in 1976. He was the president and former publisher of Carstens Publications Inc., which publishes three internationally distributed monthly magazines: Railroad Model Craftsman, Flying Models and Railfan & Railroad. Carstens passed away in 2009 at the age of 84.
You can read more about Hal Carstens on the Carstens Publications website.