I made this video last Fall, 2023. Driving past the suicide prevention sign outside the bridge always engenders a wooden feeling inside me. “Would this actually help someone?”, I think. Would this have helped me? The bridge sits underneath Olana. The site of Frederick Church’s home, above the shore of the Hudson River, looking West. A site of much importance because of what Church saw there, and then painted. A site useful because of what it looked out upon, but only to one man. His paintings then become the image of this place. I wonder how many people drowned in the river during Church’s lifetime? He died in 1900, the bridge finished in 1935. How many people have jumped off the Rip Van Winkle Bridge? I won’t look it up. This video is really about looking. Looking through the frame that has been set up to see a place like Church’s canvas would have. To then walk the bridge to see what couldn’t bee seen until the bridge opened.