Dave "The Bridge Man" Frieder spent many years climbing to the top of New York City's bridges to capture photos of views many of us will never see. This stopped in 2001 when authorities cracked down on such activities following the attacks on 9/11, though Frieder has gone up on some bridges again for magazine photo shoots. We spoke with him this week about his work, as he continues to fine-tune his coffee table book (which he believes will be done in the next year or two), and he shared some of his photos, and the stories that go along with them.
Photo by Dave Frieder
"My most well known image is the black and white I have from the top of the Manhattan Bridge and you see the Twin Towers with the clouds in the background. It was kind of somber—I got up on the bridge around 9 o’clock in the morning. There were some thin clouds, it was kind of a blah day, and I just walked around on the cables and took some photos here and there. I noticed the wind picked up just a little bit, and around 2 o’clock I noticed the sky really cleared—I then looked north and I saw these big cumulous white clouds coming in, and I said, 'Oh wow, maybe they’ll come south.'
"And as they’re getting further south they started increasing and the sky became more and more blue. I had a photograph from the top before but the sky was never that great and the sky became super clear, what they call severe clear, as the clouds moved I said I better get up there, and... it’s not easy to climb. You can see where it looks like a ladder—I had to climb that... don’t forget I’m upside down, so it’s not easy to do that. And I had to have my camera equipment hanging behind me became otherwise it would hit the steel.
"So I finally pulled myself up there, got up there, hooked up my safety harness, I hooked it up to the steel work, and the clouds started moving across Lower Manhattan. I got what I could of the 35 mm colored slides, and then the clouds moved out of the way and at that point the image was gone. This was, I believe, April 25, 1997. I never forgot it. Gorgeous spring day."
Just a few years later that view was no longer possible. The Towers were gone, and after 9/11 Frieder says, "I found all the bridge authorities put a total stop to anyone going up on the bridges. 9/11 was pretty traumatic for me, it still hurts me a lot. So many images I have, like this one showing the Twin Towers, I start crying. It’s very painful for me. I loved those Twin Towers. I know all the people at the Port Authority, I watched the Towers being built as a kid, my grandmother lived in Brooklyn so we watched them excavating all of Radio Row and they started building these huge towers that I remember reading about in the newspaper: 'Japanese architect designs new Twin Towers for Lower Manhattan.' I was so impressed and I just loved the design of the tridents where you have the pitchfork, as they called it, and in between that it was a Gothic arch like the Brooklyn Bridge arches. I liked them more than the Empire State for some reason. So, it was pretty traumatic."
Photo by Dave Frieder
Frieder's favorite bridge is the George Washington, which he tried to get to the top of for many years—"the managers said no, no, no, no, no," and they’d known me all these years at Port Authority, and so I finally contacted the manager again and I said 'Can I photograph on the towers, and can this electrician John go with me because we work pretty well together.' He goes 'Ok, no problem.' So I set up a day, I get to the facility at Fort Lee, met with John, and I said, 'John I need you to go on the cables to take these photographs.' He points at me he says, 'You’re going on the cables with me.' My jaw just dropped. I waited fifteen years for this. I said, 'What happened?' He says, 'Last night I was talking to Bob and we’ve known you a long time and he knows how excited you are about the GWB, and he agreed to let you on the cables.' I just freaked out. I said, 'Do me a favor. Slap me a few times because this must be a dream. I don’t believe this. Oh my God. This is really happening?' I was stunned. Just imagine you wanting to do something for fifteen years and it finally comes true.
"So we get into the truck, we go to the Ft. Washington side to stop at a deli to get some coffee and some pastries. He left the truck, I’m waiting in the truck, and all the windows were closed and I literally went [shouts]. I mean I screamed out loud. Everyone outside is looking around like what’s happening? They’re looking at me and I had to just let it out.
"So we get to the base of the bridge, we get in the elevator we took it to the top... we get up on the platforms where you can step onto either cable and I said, 'I can’t believe this. I have waited so long for this.' So we hook up our safety harnesses, I walk onto this one flat section on the cable that comes off the tower. We walk down to the first cable band and I look down, and I’m just standing there, and I go 'Oh my God. I waited fifteen years I for this.' I'm standing here looking down for fifteen minutes straight. I just had to look and see.
"This wasn’t a dream. I’ll never forget that day. In fact it was April 17, 2008. I just was in total shock. So I rattle off about two rolls of black and white film, two rolls of color, tons of slides, and I guess I got done around 12 o’clock. We were out there for about two hours or so, just at that spot. We walked down the cable a little bit, came back up, got some views from the cable looking at the tower."
Photo by Dave Frieder
"Now just to backtrack a color photograph which you must have seen I took on the Manhattan Bridge. It’s the color one of with myself standing there—it’s a super blue sky. I set the camera up on the tripod, aimed it about where I figured how high I need between myself and the sky and at the Downtown Manhattan skyline showing the Twin Towers. So I climbed up there, rattling off frame after frame, and I turned around, looked south, and I saw a Circle Line boat going around the tip of Manhattan. So I started waving to them. The whole boat started waving back at me. That was just so cool. It's just so cool the whole boat is waving back at me. Really awesome."
But things don't always work out perfectly, Frieder tells us: "I had some negative [experieces]—I've had peregrines attacking me on the Verrazano, I’ve had pigeons crapping on me at ground level. I’ve had passersby asking inane questions. I’ve had some police start harassing me. I’m not intimidated by them and when I start telling them what I’ve been doing, the people I know, then they back off. If you act like you’re scared or intimidated then they’ll continue harassing you, but there is a law that if you’re on public property you have every right to photograph whatever you want to photograph. If you’re photographing on a sidewalk in Manhattan, you’re photographing a building and the owner of the building doesn’t like it, if you’re not on his property he has no right to say you can’t photograph that property."
When he was allowed access to the bridges, he did climbed them legally. "So to make a long story short, after all the letters the begging, the pleading, the phone calls, I had eight years of unprecedented access to climb almost every bridge I wanted. I had great access as long as I had a permit when necessary, I always had to have insurance, always went up with permission. I always followed instructions implicitly. Never had a problem, never had an incident. So I’m not like these people... like this guy who went up on 1WTC to photograph, these guys jumping off of it at night. The woman on the Williamsburg Bridge hanging by some silk? If she fell she would have hit the third rail she would have been french-fried. I mean that’s illegal, these people just don’t think."
