A comparison of a scene both with and without the Francis Scott Key Bridge
Nearly the same photograph from the same Fort McHenry location showing the skyline with and without the Key Bridge.
Photos are by Photographer Arthur Swartwout. Here is what he had to say about this presentation…
“I grew up in a neighborhood near Fort McHenry and spent many warm summer days on the grounds of the fort with my friends. There were some weeks where we’d make the trek down to the Fort six days out of seven. We’d play at war on the grounds of the Fort, pretending to be Soldiers in the garrison defending against the British assault in 1814 that inspired Francis Scott Key to pen the words that eventually became our national anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner. Ever present and providing a backdrop to our games was the Bridge.
Fast forward 30 some odd years, and I’m riding the downslope of a career in the Army that began in 1997 when I enlisted in the Army Reserve and find myself recently returned from a deployment to Kuwait. I’ve served my country in combat and in peacetime and in a variety of roles – military intelligence analyst, tank commander and platoon leader, logistics company commander with an infantry battalion, mortuary affairs officer.
It will be no surprise to you that Fort McHenry and the Star-Spangled Banner hold a special place in my heart. Thanks to those summer days spent at the fort, I almost always envision its brick walls, barracks, grassy fields, and cannons for a moment or two when I hear the Star-Spangled Banner. Ever present and providing a backdrop to my thoughts of the fort as the anthem plays is the Bridge.
Photography has brought me a lot of peace and joy over the years, not to mention another connection with my dad, who’s been shooting photographs since his childhood when he set up a darkroom in his house before reaching his teenage years. Fort McHenry, and the Bridge, has been a favorite subject for both of us. There’s no competition. There are no attempts at one-upmanship. There’s just a desire to capture creative images of the fort, and the Bridge, that bring joy to ourselves and to others.
I think it’s fitting that one of my favorite photographs of the Bridge was taken from inside Fort McHenry. It’s even more fitting to me that I shot the photograph while touring the fort with my Army Reserve unit one cold December Saturday in 2022. There are a lot of dots being connected here. I remember the afternoon I took the photo well. It was breezy, gray with occasional patches of blue, and cold. We had previously toured the Defense Fuel Supply Point across the river from the fort, where I shot a black and white photo of the bridge, one that will soon hang on one of the walls in my house. We finished the day with a tour of the fort that I had arranged. As we were getting set to leave, something told me to turn around one final time. That’s when I saw the image that I captured of the bridge from within the fort.
The day the Bridge collapsed, I was scheduled to be in Baltimore to meet coworkers for dinner. My Jeep is in the shop, so I took the train, arriving at Baltimore’s Penn Station a little shy of 3pm. I woke up that day to a dozen text messages from family and friends from around the world asking if I had heard about the bridge and, in a few cases, asking if I was okay, most of them knowing my connection to Baltimore. Immediately upon arrival at Penn Station, I hailed a taxi and, there being another hour before I was due to check in to my hotel and another three hours before I was due to be at dinner, asked the taxi driver to drop me off at Fort McHenry. I had to see what I didn’t want to see.
The driver dropped me off at the fort’s visitors center. Having spent as much time in the military as I have, you won’t be surprised to know that I had already formulated in my head a plan for the next 30 minutes. I knew what I wanted to see before I had stepped out of the taxi and onto the grounds of the fort. My first stop was the seawall on the side of the fort facing the bridge. My first stop needed to be the seawall on the side of the fort facing the bridge. As I walked around the gently curving pathway an unfamiliar scene came into view, a scene of the Patapsco River without the Francis Scott Key Bridge. I’ve traveled around the world and have seen a lot of things that have taken my breath away, but nothing like what I saw, or didn’t see, that afternoon. Words can’t describe the scene, a sentiment that was I think shared by the dozens of other people nearby. For all the people on the grass on the side of the fort closest to the bridge, there was barely any conversation. What conversation that was being had was kept to a low and respectful murmur. That’s where I captured the scene of the river with the stay off seawall sign, a scene that for the first time in my life was void of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
A few moments of silence later and I was ready to move on to capture my second image of the day. I gathered myself and headed inside the fort. The image I captured from inside the fort with the Bridge was off-the-cuff and almost didn’t happen had something inside of me not said to turn around one final time. The image I captured the day of the bridge’s collapse was much more deliberately planned. I wanted, needed, an “after” image to go with the original because I knew that, more than any other pair of photos of the bridge I’ve taken, an image from the same angle as the one I took on a cold December day at the end of 2022 would show the dramatic difference what life looked like with the bridge and what life now looks like without the bridge. I feel as though I succeeded. The difference between the two images, taken at about the same time of day from about the same angle, is as stark as any other pair of images of the bridge you’ll see here or elsewhere online.
It’s worth noting that the company I work for, a management consulting firm called Greencastle Consulting, is entirely staffed by veterans which means there are more dots being connected here. There are 130 of us in the company, and every single one of us has served our country. I wouldn’t have traveled to Baltimore that day had I not been asked to meet a few coworkers who were eager to see me for the first time since I had left for a deployment to Kuwait in the middle of last year. More dots being connected.
Peace, everyone.
Be sure to visit Arthur’s photography gallery to see all of his work.
Click here: https://arthur-swartwout.pixels.com/