Avignon, Pont St. Bénezet 1863 - 1865

Edouard Baldus captured this view of the Pont St. Bénezet in Avignon, France, using photography, a medium still in its relative infancy. As such, photography was often used to record historical monuments, thereby placing the relatively new medium of photography in conversation with the traditional arts like painting and sculpture. Baldus’s photograph captures more than just a stone bridge and its reflection in the water. The cluster of working boats in the foreground, while not the ostensible subject of the photograph, introduce labor and commerce, making us consider the role of the river as a site of trade. The image then is about progress and development but also about time and change. You see, only some arches of the bridge still stand; the rest have fallen, eroded by weather and time, bearing witness to both human ambition and inevitable decline. What does it mean to capture a ruin? What is Baldus trying to say about history, progress, and the passage of time?