When you cross a bridge, it is the sweeping view or the rolling horizon that holds your attention, not the structure that makes the air solid beneath your feet. These wonders of engineering that cheat difficult terrain and smooth our passage are apt to be taken for granted. There are a few showmen—Sydney’s soaring Harbour Bridge, the romantic Rialto in Venice and London’s stately Tower Bridge—which are destinations in their own right. But there are many more dogsbodies that span rivers and ravines, stoically fulfilling their purpose.
For this photo essay Garry Simpson has captured bridges that have a quiet beauty. Some caught his eye during road trips between jobs, “not hero bridges, but ones off the beaten track”. We asked him to photograph a few more in England’s industrial north and the Swiss Alps—a land of mountains, valleys and exemplary engineering.
Simpson, who grew up at the other end of England in Bournemouth, was always a “right brain” kid, constantly drawing cartoons, mostly from “The Jungle Book”. His father gave him his first camera when he was 11. “A horrendous cliché” for a photographer, he admits with a grin. But the rest of his story is not so predictable. On leaving school in the 1980s, a creative career wasn’t an option for Simpson, so he joined the Royal Marines for eight years and hardly took a snap.
more here.