At the New York Times' Lens blog, there's a profile of photographer Jamey Stillings, whose portraits of the bridge in process have an eerie, painterly quality. And to think he came across it nearly by accident:

In early 2009, with no major studio projects ahead of him, Mr. Stillings persuaded his assistant to hit the road to collect images “the old-fashioned way.” Heading for the Mojave Desert, they stopped to photograph a dramatic ring of mineral deposits outlining Lake Mead. They turned around and spotted a bridge, large and unfinished. They fell immediately for its visual complexity.

The Hoover Dam bypass bridge, which opened to the public in October 2010, is supposed to ease traffic flow across the dam. It spans the Colorado River gorge, connecting Nevada and Arizona. Its construction echoed that of the Hoover Dam during the Great Depression; like the dam, it became a concrete sign of resilience, rising against the odds of both nature and the economy with what Mr. Stillings calls “Mad Max-ian massiveness.”