Bridge and gravels
- 📍 Location: Pont du Gard, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
The Pont du Gard in full daylight, with the Gardon lying flat in front of it and the gravel bed of the river visible right through the water in the foreground. The aqueduct and its reflection occupy the upper half of the frame and mirror each other almost exactly; the lower half belongs to the stones under the surface.
That was the whole decision. A reflection alone gives you symmetry, which is impressive for two seconds and boring afterwards. Adding the submerged gravel gives the eye a third plane, and suddenly the picture has depth as well as symmetry: you look through the water, then at the water, then at what the water is holding.
The light is high and clear, the light that is usually avoided, and it is the right one here. Only overhead sun reaches the bottom of the river and makes the gravel legible; softer light would have turned the surface opaque and left the foreground as a grey band. The cost is a hard blue sky, and I accepted it.
Two thousand years ago this was not a monument but plumbing, a fifty-kilometre channel built to fall by twenty-five centimetres per kilometre so that Nimes could have water. The Romans did not intend beauty. They intended a slope, and got this.
I wanted the aqueduct treated as an object rather than as a ruin: geometry above, geology below, and nothing in between.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
