Congruence
Wednesday, February 01, 2017
At St. Edward’s High School in Austin, Texas in the late 50s, I had a Plane Geometry teacher
called Brother Gregory. He was soft spoken and almost always had a smile on his
face. I learned geometry from this kindly man and to this day I cannot forget
his explanation of the words congruence and congruent. In our classroom and
homework assignments we were to fit one triangle into another and if this
happened without overlap you had congruence.
In my career as a photographer I might have been cubbyholed
as a portrait photographer even though I took my versions of landscapes and
architectural photographs. At the same time I can assert that I did a lot of
experimentation as I never wanted to do one style to the point that I would
have been making the motions of taking the photographs. It always had to be and
must be to this day a challenge.
Perhaps when Helen Yagi and I met and I persuaded her to pose
for me I found a perfect congruence of ideas, style and experimentation. In the
case of the photographs here I used a pinhole body cap on my Mamiya RB-67 Pro
SD instead of a lens. I remember that the exposures were constant flashing of
my studio flash on full power for one minute and 35 seconds. Because the
exposures were so long Helen could move a bit without affecting the sharpness
which was not all that sharp to begin with.
Throughout this time of taking photographs, every once in
a while I find that Gregorian congruence. Who knows someone like Helen might
give me a call this year. I will be ready.