Joseph A. Blum: The Bridge Builders
Curator. San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery: City Hall. June - September 2013
In The Bridge Builders, photographer Joseph A. Blum captures the human spirit, strength, and ingenuity behind the construction of the new East Span of the Bay Bridge. Over the course of a decade, Blum documents the extraordinary labor of the men and women who create this monumental structure, drawing from his own background as a boilermaker, shipfitter, and welder. His black-and-white photographs emphasize grit, precision, and vulnerability, portraying workers not as anonymous figures but as skilled individuals engaged in an act of collective determination. Against the vast scale of steel and sky, the images reveal a choreography of bodies that underscores both the danger and the dignity of industrial labor.
Blum’s perspective is deeply embedded in the work itself—he climbs scaffolds, leans into beams, and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with his subjects to offer an insider’s view rarely accessible to the public. In doing so, he creates a portrait of construction that transcends documentation, elevating these moments into a meditation on labor, landscape, and legacy. The Bridge Builders honors those who risk their lives to produce an iconic piece of infrastructure while affirming the artistry and courage inherent in manual work. The exhibition invites viewers to see the Bay Bridge not only as an engineering marvel, but as the culmination of human effort, resilience, and collaboration.
About Joseph A. Blum
Joseph Blum, born in New York City in 1941, has lived in California since 1961 and is a graduate of the University of California (1965). He spent twenty-five years working in the trades as a boilermaker, shipfitter, and welder, and served as Recording Secretary of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers, AFL-CIO, Local #6. Drawing on this firsthand experience, Blum has dedicated his post-trades career to documenting labor processes in both photography and writing, exploring the lives, skills, and resilience of workers in industrial and construction settings.
Blum’s black-and-white photographs, many held in the Pictorial Collection of the Bancroft Library, capture the shipyards and metal trades of the Bay Area and extend to large-scale infrastructure projects such as high-rise construction in downtown San Francisco, the Conservatory of Flowers renovation, pear harvesting in the California Delta, the Al Zampa Memorial Bridge, and maritime crane construction in Shanghai for the Port of Oakland. His current, long-term project, spanning over fifteen years, documents the construction of the new East Span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, offering an intimate, ground-level view of industrial labor, technical precision, and human effort.