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A looming, towering contraption forms a passageway; a warning for newcomers that the city holds onto the past and present only; a brooding and ominous reminder that one must look back to see how far one has gone; during summertime, it’s a black stark contrast against the glistening bright waterfront; during the long winter months of the Pacific Northwest, it’s a foreboding beacon of our plight; it hides in plain sight waiting for modernity to cross its path then snaps shut. It stands to reason that no sooner it was completed than residents called the Steel Bridge, the “Iron Monster.” 

Undeterred and resolute, I enter the stomping ground – I use the lower deck to hover thirty feet above the Willamette. During the summer months, the static landscape evolves into a playground — place and space coalesce — the transitive and intransitive collide — what’s within is summoned, what’s without is inspired.

Trains, bicycles, boats, beatniks, day-trippers, and lovers all feed the algorithm. Fleeting scenes are generated that make me contemplate, react, and release the shutter simultaneously.

The surface of the river is a canvas – it is textured glass. At times, it is reflective molten glass; others, it’s more like a long rippling backdrop of satin. The satin is unspooled and draped vertically, horizontally, or diagonally — whichever makes sense in the moment.

I focus only on the comings and goings. Like twigs to a stream, people plop into the river and rush away. It’s a mass exodus from the mundane, and I hover — capturing the current of sanguine bodies. I have views of both sides of the Willamette; but with scenes beneath me so rich, so dynamic, who needs landscape with a horizon.

You cannot step twice into the same river; you cannot leave all that you left behind; and you cannot change what is constantly changing.