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The Blue Bridge

Generally I am not into bridges, but a good friend of mine made sure that I brought out my camera and focused on one. There is nothing wrong with bridges, however, they are great. They lead us over highly frequented roads, over Rivers and onto the other side….

 

I tend to think about bridges like the ones Indiana Jones usually hang onto in the jungle… wooden, broken and missing pieces of its structure. Among the many bridges I visited around the world, it has been the primitive bridges, suspension bridges, that have fascinated me the most. In such places where you start to wonder….who built this bridge and how long will it survive. Am I the last one to step onto it?

 

 

And then of course, you may experience the huge bridges, where you, as a small human being, become intimidated by the intelligence and hard workmanship behind it. The longest and highest bridges in the world are to be find in Asia. The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the Ponte Vecchio in Florence are probably some of the most famous bridges of the world.

 

Having a daughter studying to become an architect, I tend to look closer nowadays on design, materials and construction. And this brings me back to the bridge, that my friend introduced me to in Hamburg, the Cremon Bridge. Built in 1982, this bridge was due to its design with no doubt quite a brave maneuver by the architects (PPA Architects) and the city. A blue bridge made of steel with escalators in an extravagant design with a sail-like pylon and hexagonal stairs. A different kind of bridge, just as different as the many people, who crossed the bridge in the past.

Bridges bring people and countries closer together….in my case as well. By coincidence I met Ligaya/Daniel on the bridge and I asked her, if I might take some pictures of her. The name Ligaya is from the Philippines and means felicity ….in my mind we are now back to humid jungles with suspension bridges…

 

Ligaya represents to me the diversity and uniqueness, in the same way as this bridge did. You might stumble about me using the past form. But this bridge was taken down a few weeks ago. The city decided that the maintenance of the escalators was too expensive and also further office buildings would like to use the big space.

 

I went there with my camera on the evening, where they started to take down the bridge. A group of Protesters were there as well, sobbing in their Cremont pearl wine, upset about this undertaken by the city. I couldn’t help to feel upset too…this in some way ugly, but different fascinating looking bridge was leaving the city. I learned, that there was even a Facebook group, who every year celebrated with Cremont wine on the bridge….a bridge, that was definitely bringing people together.

I take a look at Ligaya and start to visualize the bridge being painted in beautiful colors. I am pretty sure, that this bridge could have been transformed into a place to visit in Hamburg, just like Ligaya transforms himself into another herself.

 

I have used double exposure on some of the pictures to emphasize the ending life of this bridge.

 

Thank you Peter for taking me there.

 

For more pictures of the Cremon bridge to come, visit Elbphotohamburg on instagram.

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