Bridging Buffalo

Photographs by Bruce Jackson

Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society

February 22, 2006-January 28, 2007

click here or on the poster for slideshow

Except when they are particularly beautiful (the Brooklyn Bridge, Pont Neuf, Calatrava's Bilbao footbridge), particularly ugly (the Pulaski Skyway in Jersey City) or clogged (the Grand Island Bridge whenever any repairs are in process), bridges are nearly invisible. We move across them and sometimes through them, but we hardly ever notice them.

At least, not consciously. Bridges are very much part of the urban environment. They are not only sculptural objects in space, but often they frame the way we experience objects surrounding and beyond them. That experience is complex and various. The bridge experience of the driver of a car (who must look forward) and a passenger in the same car (whose gaze may move or rest anywhere) are not at all the same, and both of those are significantly different from a bicyclist or runner or walker.

These photographs are about ten of Buffalo's bridges. The earliest image (the wreckage under the Skyway) dates from 1975; the most recent (the South Michigan Avenue lift bridge) in mid-February 2006. The images of the complex of steel bridges on Hamburg and Seneca streets (built in 1920) date from 1994 and 1995; the bridges were torn down in 1997 and replaced by two very boring pre-fab concrete bridges, one of which you'll see here.

Bruce Jackson is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture at University at Buffalo. He is a photographer, filmmaker, and the author or editor of 22 books and hundreds of articles in scholarly and general publications. His photographs have been published widely in the US and Europe. He is editor of the web journal Buffalo Report.