The 1:1 Aspect Ratio

The image ratio of 1:1, the so-called "square format", has graced album covers and CD boxes alike. It is egalitarian in its orientation, favoring neither horizontal or vertical. It is the circle squared, a unity of harmony.

My camera captures rectangular images; I composed these in the G1's electronic viewfinder with the vertical composition already decided when the shutter was tripped; the horizontal composition was decided only later, in front of the computer screen, where I could carefully consider what I had to work with, balancing the forces of fields and lines, arriving at some tentative harmony as I cropped these to square format.

It's a work in progress; the square is demanding of perfect harmony and balance, a brutal mistress indeed. I will be working once more with the 1:1 aspect ratio, but for now this is what I have to show.