Varying Geometries No. 2
These were never merely places. They were alignments waiting to be rediscovered.
Varying Geometries No. 2
Having rephotographed these forty-year-old 35mm prints on the Leica Q3 43, I found myself less interested in preservation than in re-encounter. Time had already completed its first transformation, reducing the original moment into a fixed arrangement of tones and lines. The Leica did not simply record the prints; it interrogated them. Its clarity reasserted the authority of edges that had softened with age, and in doing so revealed that geometry, more than subject, had always been the true protagonist. These were never merely places. They were alignments waiting to be rediscovered.
What appealed to me immediately was the insistence of thresholds. In the first image, the open doors frame a receding interior with almost ceremonial gravity, the symmetry both inviting and forbidding. The space resolves into a precise convergence, every vertical and horizontal element submitting to an invisible order that feels less constructed than ordained. In the second, the arch and fence perform a quieter but no less exacting function. The columns hold their position with stoic endurance, while the gate interrupts passage, converting depth into denial. Here, geometry does not guide the eye forward; it halts it, reminding us that structure is as much about exclusion as access.
In rephotographing these prints, I became aware that what persists across four decades is not the specific architecture but the discipline it imposes on perception. This was the underlying current in Varying Geometries, though I did not yet fully recognize it. Now, in Varying Geometries Number Two, that realization feels unavoidable. The Leica Q3 43, with its exacting optical neutrality, did not modernize these images. It clarified their original intent. Geometry, indifferent to time, remains intact. It is the one element that neither fades nor yields, continuing to assert its quiet authority long after the moment that first gave rise to it has passed."
- Will Hazlitt, R9 Media Photo Collective