the eye traffics in feelings, not thoughts (3 January 2016)

In 1870, work began on the Brooklyn Bridge, stretching from Manhattan Island to the Borough of Brooklyn.

Brooklyn bridge workers 1914, photo by Eugene de Salignac

It lives in the New York consciousness and mythology, and some absurd tales are true.

PT Barnum offered to test the strength of the completed bridge by marching elephants across it, and did so on 17 May 1884.

"To people who looked up from the river at the big arch of electric lights it seemed as if Noah’s Ark were emptying itself over on Long Island”    (New York Times) 

The Brooklyn Bridge appears in poetry and photography.

 ...it stretches on cables of string
to the feet of the stars.

- Futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky
was moved to write when he first saw the bridge in 1925

Hart Crane's poem The Bridge was published with photos by Walker Evans.

Whether he is an artist or not, 

the photographer is a joyous sensualist, 

for the simple reason that 

the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.

- Walker Evans

Walker Evans, Abstraction - Brooklyn bridge, vers 1928-1929

Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. 
Die knowing something. You are not here long.

- Walker Evans