Photographer
Iller Bedogni
BRIDGES
Maybe it is because I was born in a house next to a bridge and when I was a child from that bridge I used to watch the water with the reflections of the sky, shining, roaring, running free feeding my imagination and my wandering spirit. Many years have passed since then, but I feel the fascination of the bridge, I feel the balance of the perfect geometries, the strength that allows one to go beyond the limit, the ingenuity of man over the centuries and his history of knowledge, the need for connection: now an outstretched hand to different identities, now the galloping of battles, now crowds of pilgrims and merchants, or noisy and distracted traffic on the ropes of the suspended bridges of modernity…Continue
Iller Bedogni
Collection:
BRIDGES
Maybe it is because I was born in a house next to a bridge and when I was a child from that bridge I used to watch the water with the reflections of the sky, shining, roaring, running free feeding my imagination and my wandering spirit. Many years have passed since then, but I feel the fascination of the bridge, I feel the balance of the perfect geometries, the strength that allows one to go beyond the limit, the ingenuity of man over the centuries and his history of knowledge, the need for connection: now an outstretched hand to different identities, now the galloping of battles, now crowds of pilgrims and merchants, or noisy and distracted traffic on the ropes of the suspended bridges of modernity…Continue
Iller Bedogni
Bridges
I need to cross the bridges, to rely on the subtle power, to feel that breath of flight in the mass of stone or steel, which consciously sinks between the banks and into the water, with the naive surprise of the escaped abyss, with the joy of the new discovery that leads from one world to another.
In Bagni di Lucca my bridge is the Devil’s Bridge and the world I encounter is that of the ancient builder who sold the soul of the first passer-by on the condition that the devil would help him raise the main arch.
In New York I hear the first carriages that crossed the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan on 24 May 1883. Here is the legacy of lives lost, the long lines of desperate suicides and the accident that also took the life of the engineer who designed it.
In Florence, on the Ponte Vecchio today there are no longer the butchers’ shops that populated it at the beginning of its history, yet the narrow rooms and wooden fixtures, the eternal passage of a timeless crowd, the refined jewellers’ shops that have furnished the passage since the end of 1550, are just the signs of a changing world that passes over the ancient stones suspended over the Arno, rich with the paths of dozens of generations.
At night, the Erasmus Bridge hangs suspended between its steel ropes, vibrating like the strings of a harp. By day it blends lightly against the transparent midday sky.
The Chain Bridge connects the dual souls of the Danube’s banks, the elegant tradition of Buda and the popular one of Pest; it is a steel bridge on massive pylons, a proud Hungarian pride with a lion’s head.
The long stone serpent of the eleven arches of the Hunchback Bridge in Bobbio, stretches far beyond the river bed and creeps creeping into the landscape of the gentle hills of Emilia.
In Venice, there is a long, high lace, sewn between the banks of a crowded neighbourhood, the child of the passage and pleasure of meeting along a compulsory route across the Grand Canal. The Rialto Bridge suddenly reveals itself, elegant and light stone lace.
I look at them and cross them, mirrors of the journey and of knowledge, yet unambleable spectators, rainbows on the water, curves that make the world a simple ring and the journey one more reason to return, sooner or later, to the start.
