Bridge

When photographers consider documenting a bridge, the obvious response is to envisage a profusion of geometry and graphics. But when you are predominantly a photographer of people and landscapes and when you travel over that bridge almost every day, the response turns immediately to other things the moods, the people and, characteristically in the case of multi-award winning photographer Robert Billington, the quirky and humorous.

It was with these responses in mind that in 1993 Robert Billington commenced a six-year assignment to capture on black and white film his own view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Using Nikon F3 and Rolleiflex Twin Lens Reflex cameras, he concentrated on unusual angles and his trademark sense of the bizarre. Also vital to his approach was a vision of the bridge, not in isolation, but in interaction with its surroundings and in constant movement by virtue of the many forms of traffic that give the bridge its purpose more than ever today.

A few stories about the bridge's construction and opening are legendary. Sarah Billington's research unearthed some of them, but also many of little-known anecdotes and poems that are at times funny, emotive or simply informative.

The fascinating combination of selenium-toned images with text has resulted in The Bridge, an account that presents The Sydney Harbour Bridge in a truly unique way.