A Phenomenological Exploration of a Bridge in Palmerton Pennsylvania

Matthew Giobbi, March 2024

Palmerton

Hardcover, Available at AMAZON

I visited the neighborhood in Palmerton with my camera. Not far from the intersection the rail line cuts through the neighborhood, diagonally crossing the streets at roof level. Knowing Kline was captivated by the steel trestle of the railroad bridges, my eye too was captured by the lines and shapes. In fact, these railroad bridges are so characteristic that I would say they are a defining feature of the neighborhood in Palmerton and in nearby Weissport. Franz would have walked these bridges from Lehighton many times.

I took one photo. The image was shot spontaneously, at eye-level, as a I walked past the bridge. I could not help but to imagine that Franz too would have stopped to study the bridge. When I returned home, I began playing with the image, exploring different angles, different orientations, and different cropping. As time passed, I no longer saw the bridge but began to see shapes and lines, chromatic hues of blacks, greys, and whites, and fierce angles. The image was no longer a photograph of a bridge but had become two-dimensional painting in black and white. The phenomenology is known as Gestaltzerfall and is commonly experienced when a repeated word seems to lose its meaning and familiarity. Through repetition and isolation, the familiar becomes unfamiliar. The Gestalt collapses and we begin to see constituent sounds and rhythms, constituent lines and shapes. The similarity to Kline’s bold paintings of the 1950s was remarkable to my eyes. In turn, the way I experienced Kline’s paintings changed. I began to see three-dimensional representations in those stark lines of black and formidable shapes of white. One painting he called The Bridge (1955) stands out to me. I can’t help but to imagine that some thirty years earlier, in his youth, Kline was moved by the powerful feelings these structures in Palmerton emote.