Everyone should have a St Johns Bridge
By Zeb Andrews
1 June 2008
Photographers learn their craft in many different ways: through school, libraries, galleries, assisting in studios or experimenting on their own in the field. I learned photography from a bridge. It really is difficult to explain the impact this bridge has had on my development as a photographer, but I shall try, and should I fail, well there are these images to help fill in the gaps my words leave.
For over five years I have been immersed in photography, and for over five years I have photographed this bridge. Summer evenings, Winter evenings, foggy Fall mornings, Spring afternoons. In the snow, in the rain, at night. I have photographed this bridge with pinhole cameras, 35mm SLRs, Holgas and Hasselblads, TLRs, 4x5s, and even once in an ice storm with an 8x10 camera. I have shot it digitally and with film. Color and black and white. Infrared and cross-processed. Every time I get my hands on a new piece of equipment or think of a new trick to try, this bridge is where I head. You see, when you visit the same place as often as five or six times a week over the span of several years, you learn to enjoy the familiar, but also to appreciate the fact that no matter how familiar, there is always a new angle to be found, a new perspective to be explored. As a photographer, this is an invaluable lesson to remember and it is one that I carry with me no matter where I am out shooting.
I do need to mention a bit about the history of this bridge. It was designed by David B. Steinman, an accomplished engineer who helped design over 300 bridges on six different continents, and I can make a pretty good guess as to which continent he missed. I mention Steinman specifically because he later remarked, "If you asked me which of the bridges I love best, I believe I would say the St. Johns Bridge. I put more of myself into that bridge than any other bridge". When one's goal is to create something so grand, I can think of few better ways to so invest oneself. This bridge truly is a work of heart and soul and quite simply, I am awed by its grandeur every time I stand under it, craning this way and that to take it all in. For me, it is really no surprise I am so entranced by it.
My portraits of this bridge are also quite personal, but not in the manner that I am shy about sharing them. Rather, like Dr. Steinman said about his bridge, I too say about my photography of it. While the scale of my images may not match the grandness of the bridge he created, of all the pictures I have taken, I put more of myself into photographing this bridge than anything else. While five years may be a relatively short amount of time, and certainly a far cry from some other photographers' commitment to specific bodies of work, these images nonetheless represent a significant portion of my life that has been lived under and on this magnificent span. And so I hope you enjoy, not just this collection of images, but also the bridge they are of, for both are works of heart and soul. And I hope too, that you find a St. Johns Bridge of your own.
