Sept 29th - Oct 21st, 2022

The opening is on Sept 29th, 5PM

We are part of structured nature and society. These natural and social structures we keep trying to understand, to study, to imagine, and to change. Beyond the structural aspects we see, there are many we suspect, and infinitely more we ignore. Some we wish for. In the best of them we discover a common stable equilibrium of energy. We recognize it in the qualities of economy, efficiency, elegance, beauty and reason.

If it meets these requirements, a bridge between words and images is another structure, well suited to reveal these qualities in the built structures. Take a constructive view, understand the structures, like them, construct your own.

Bojidar Yanev was born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1947. After graduating from schools ##20 and 22, and the University for Architecture, Construction and Geodesics (UACG, 1970), he worked at the Institute for Structural Cybernetics. He holds a Doctorate in Civil Engineering from Columbia University (1976), and has worked in California and New York as researcher, consultant, professor, and civil servant since 1978.

In 1989 Yanev was invited to join the newly established Bridge Bureau at the New York City Department of Transportation. There he established and managed the Unit for Bridge Inspection and Management until retiring in 2018. Concurrently Yanev taught courses on Structural Stability, Bridge Design and Management at the Civil Engineering Department,Columbia University and at Brooklyn Polytechnic, NYU.

Yanev is a frequent speaker at bridge events in Japan, France, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and occasionally, Italy, Indonesia and Australia. He has conducted brief bridge management courses at Tsinghua University in Beijing and Tongji University in Shanghai. In 2019 – 2020 he taught Fall semester courses in Bridge Management at UACG, Sofia.

Yanev’s publications are primarily on structural seismic response and bridge management. His book Bridge Management (John Wiley, 2007, 656 p.) was translated in Japanese and Chinese. In 1994 the American Association of Civil Engineers (ASCE) recognized Yanev as Administrative Engineer of the Year. In 1995 the Association of Bridge Constructors and Designers (ABCD) honoured Yanev as Engineer of the Year. In 2008 UACG awarded to Yanev Doctor Honoris Causa.

Yanev’s photography has been exhibited at the Bulgarian National Gallery. Photography has enabled Yanev to capture and preserve unique moments of his multi-faceted activities, to maximize their professional impact among colleagues, as well as to attract the interest and understanding of the general public in the profession.

He views bridges as a material equivalent of ideas in the social consciousness. Both serve a useful purpose only when they are well understood, remembered, and maintained. In that spirit, his images attempt to integrate aesthetics and information, form and content, the detailed scrutiny of the professional and the enchanted stare of the amateur.