This was written for Middle of the Road, a collaborative poster project initiated by Robin Cameron and Denise Schatz. It is an edited, and slightly expanded, version of an email I sent describing the motivation behind a photograph I wanted to shoot from the middle of the Manhattan Bridge of someone photographing me from the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge. It never happened.
I’ve been thinking about bridges a lot lately. Specifically the ones I cross over traveling from my home in Brooklyn into Manhattan. Usually on bike, but more and more on foot. These bridges are perfect intermediate spaces, neither here nor there, and right in the middle—the spot right at the top before coming back down—is one of the only viewpoints where this city actually looks like the place I always wanted it to be.
I’ve also been thinking about the jazz musician Sonny Rollins, one of the greatest tenor saxaphone players of all time. In 1959, he walked away from fame, turned his back on the jazz scene, and focused on playing his instrument. In search of privacy, Rollins walked to the middle of the Williamsburg bridge where he could practice in near solitude for hours at a time. Three years later he came down off the bridge, returned to jazz, and released an album (The Bridge) that sold great, but failed to impress critics who were expecting a record of revolutionary proportions.
It’s possible that a bridge is the perfect place to end up when you walk away from something with only moving forward in mind. But what does it mean when you come back and everything is the same as when you left? If your journey landed you somewhere in between, why bother coming back down at all?