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The second Photo Urbanism Fellowship was awarded to Jonathan Smith for "The
Bridge Project," a series that captured the city's bridges, highways, walkways and
overpasses.
He shows how these structures connect with the land and how parks, industries, and residential communities adapt to the city's elevated transportation infrastructure, whether monumental or mundane.
The Design Trust awarded the second Photo Urbanism fellowship to Jonathan Smith for The Bridge Project. Mr. Smith undertook an in-depth photographic study of New York City's bridges, with the aim of capturing both the structures, large and small, and the spaces they command. An exhibit of photographs from the project was held in March 2005.
Through his work with Joel Meyerowitz and the World Trade Center Archive, Mr. Smith developed a fascination with the role of photography in creating a historical record. His work for Photo Urbanism forms a catalogue of New York's twelve major bridges, as well as a significant number of the city's smaller bridges, raised highways, and other elevated walkways and overpasses. In addition, he documented how the bridges connect with the land – how the parks, industries, and residential communities of New York are affected and interact with the city's transportation infrastructure, whether monumental or mundane.
The
Bridge Project
March 23, 2005
International Center for Tolerance Education
Through photographing the aesthetic and structural qualities, from the monumental down to the most modest of bridges, I have become more and more aware of the areas into which the bridges land, the communities they navigate through, the parks they tower above, the spaces they create beneath them where car parks, commerce and recreation appear…. My aim is to have created a concise archive of the bridges themselves, the details of their structure and the materials they are built from, and most importantly the effect they have upon the urban landscapes they cut into.