Mending the Bridge 1916

Philip Little made this etching, called 'Mending the Bridge', using a copper plate and paper. Etching involves covering a metal plate with a waxy, acid-resistant substance, scratching an image into it, and then submerging the plate in acid, which bites into the exposed metal. The plate is then inked and pressed onto paper, transferring the image. Look closely, and you can almost feel the grit of the industrial scene, an ethos made tangible by the etching process itself. This wasn't some polished, idealized vista. Little captured the industry of labor, the workers rendered as an anonymous mass, dwarfed by the task at hand. Little’s choice of etching, a technique capable of rendering fine detail but also suggestive of the provisional and incomplete, seems particularly apt. It reminds us that all structures, both physical and social, are subject to decay and require constant maintenance. By focusing on the process of repair, Little directs our attention to the labor and materials that underpin our built environment, and indeed our very way of life.