Chain Bridge in St. Petersburg 1903

This image is a print of the Chain Bridge in St. Petersburg by Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva. Look closely, and you’ll see it’s made up of lots of thin lines with a limited, monochromatic palette of browns and creams. I wonder what it was like for her standing there, drawing the bridge. Maybe she was thinking about other artists and engineers who had drawn it before. The bridge itself is such a feat of design, all those cables and supports creating this amazing open structure. She picked out the geometry of it. There are small details, like the tiny figures of people crossing the bridge, that make you feel the scale of this thing. Then, of course, there's the water, rendered with these simple horizontal marks that suggest movement. I bet Ostroumova-Lebedeva was inspired by others to create it, just as she inspires us now. It’s a great image of a great bridge.