Julian bridge
- 📍 Location: Pont Julien, Bonnieux, Luberon, France
- 📅 Date: 2022
The Pont Julien in the Luberon, photographed from the dry riverbed with the sun setting straight through the central arch. The bridge runs across the frame and the light comes from inside it, which is the only way to photograph a structure whose whole meaning is its openings.
I worked low and close, so the near arch would rise above the horizon line and the burnt grass of the bed would fill the bottom of the picture. Standing on the road above gives a bridge; standing where the water used to be gives an architecture, and reminds the viewer that the Calavon is a river that spends much of the year absent.
The light is late, low and directional. It sets fire to the dry grass, leaves the upstream face of the stone in shadow, and turns the arch into a frame around a piece of sky. The contrast is extreme and I did not try to reduce it: the subject here is the difference between what is lit and what is not.
This bridge was built around 3 BC on the Via Domitia, and it carried ordinary road traffic, cars included, until 2005. Two thousand years of continuous service, and it was retired only because the lorries got heavier. That fact changes how you stand in front of it.
I wanted an image about endurance without solemnity: warm stone, dead grass, and a low sun that treats a Roman bridge like any other object in a field.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
