Safety First, or Then collides with Now

I like the way the times in this image fail to blend: The genteel attitude behind the signs on the bridge itself clash with the harsh tone of the highway signs outside it. It is as though the bridge were holding a gathering of aesthetes to discuss how form follows function-- design for beauty and engineer for permanence (19th century)-- while outside a mob of lawyers is picketing with signs (21st century). A metaphor for our times, it carries through the medium itself--watercolor (old school) rendered digitally (high tech). LOL! {:-)

 

This could only happen because this bridge has been in continuous use for nearly a century and a half. Built for farmers' horse-drawn wagons, it has had to adapt to a road full of automobiles and trucks, as well as to a world with a strange new way of looking at things.

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Uploaded on March 3, 2015