Bridges

Graeme Outerbridge calls his book "a visual adventure book on bridges," which must be counted among the most useful inventions of humankind, and the most beautiful. For it, he has photographed 45 great bridges in Europe and the United States, from little stone arch bridges that ceremoniously cross rivers in great European cities, such as the Rialto in Venice and the Pont Alexandre III in Paris, to steel suspension bridges that span vast distances, such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the George Washington Bridge in New York. The photographs are dramatic and atmospheric, and at the same time clearly informative and full of significant structural and architectural detail. Of all man-made structures, bridges are the most open and unadorned; they bare their skeletons to the world. From foundation to tower, a bridge is an education in the elegant solution to complex problems in engineering and architecture. Graeme Outerbridge shows us the very nuts and bolts that hold massive spans together; the cables that support them; the web of beams that keep them stable. Examples of works of most of the world's great bridge builders are included, from the unknown Roman engineer who designed the Pont du Gard in Nuimes in France to the twentieth-century Swiss architect Robert Maillart, who built remarkable spans in reinforced concrete. There are famous bridges designed by Thomas Telford (Craigellachie Bridge), Isambard Brunel (Clifton Bridge), Gustave Eiffel (Garabit Viaduct), Gustav Lindenthal (Queensboro Bridge), and Othmar Ammann (Verrazano Narrows Bridge). Structural types and materials range from a primitive clapper bridge in Devon, England, consisting of monoliths spanning stone piers, to the very latest suspension bridges of West Germany. Graeme Outerbridge is a freelance photographer whose work has been published widely in major magazines. His first book was Bermuda Abstracts. David Outerbridge's introduction provides an historical and technical perspective on bridges. Specifications for each bridge pictured are also included.