In some of the photographs you have to squint hard to see it – sandwiched between tree trunks or cloaked in fog. In others, it’s so close up that all you see are rivets or the cross-hatching of metal beams. In his series Thirty-Six Views of the Golden Gate Bridge (the title nods to Katsushika Hokusai’s famous woodcut prints of Mount Fuji), US photographer Arthur Drooker set out to defamiliarise the great Californian landmark, asking: “Is it possible to see the most photographed bridge in the world anew?” After two years on the project, he came away with “deep admiration” for its builders who defied predictions that the mile-wide strait could never be bridged. “What I found most resonant,” says Drooker, “even more than the span’s status as an engineering and architectural icon, is its power as a symbol of possibility.”

• Thirty-Six Views of the Golden Gate Bridge is available from arthurdrooker.com