[Leica] HCB and Geometry; More

["Robert Rose" <rjr@usip.com>]

Here is a machine translation of a passage that seems to indicate that
HCB was in fact thinking of pi 3.14159, and not phi 1.618.

The passage alone does not help identify whether he misunderstood
pi/phi.  Some parts ("The right report/ratio of the things") seem like
phi, but the spiral staircase would revolve in multiples of pi radians. 
But, the John Banville essay ttp://www.nybooks.com/articles/16413 leaves
no doubt that what Banville saw HCB writing was an equation for the
Golden Section, which is associated with phi, not pi.

What that means is that it seems likely that John Banville quoted
correctly, and that it was HCB who was confused.  He certainly
understood the concept of the Golden Section (and was able to execute it
in his vision), but maybe just mistakenly thought it was related to pi.

Regards,
Bob Rose



========================================
A discussion with Cartier-Bresson diffused by the AFP
Henri Cartier-Bresson: "I believe in pi" 
27/04 12:32: 
"For this morning, I have been obsessed by the idea of the zero. How to
define the zero?" In the bathed living room of light, of which the sight
embraces the Jardin entirety of Tileries, Henri Cartier-Bresson appears,
worried.
Walk is a little difficult -94 years very of even but the setting is
relaxed - clear wind-breaker, tie-lace with turquoise clasp, matched
with the broad loop of Hopi belt -, the direct glance, the courteous
smile.
This monument of photography, how it visited is? Point already the
feeling that of retrospective to the Library of France, of inauguration
of Foundation "HCB" - however imminent -, it will not make mention.
"All that, it is past. I believe neither in last nor in the future.
Only at the present. Then, of the past let us make close-cropped table!
Shave like zero ", laughs it.
Silence. Does mathematics interest it? "the large mathematicians always
impressed me. I went in Bangalore, to India. It is there that lived
largest of them, Aryabhatta (note: Ve-life century). One owes him, in
geometry, to have given the value of +Pi+ with his four decimals:
3,1416".
"For me, there is no God, there is +Pi+".
"God, it is a world of culpability. With the original fault, we is
guilty to be alive, they are monstrous. Moreover I never had the faith.
And if I were useful like child of chorus, it was for better whistling
the communion wine! I was already resistant!"" what impassions me, be
the proportions "Silence. And "Pi"? "pi, it is what falls well. The
right report/ratio of the things, the harmony, balance, Yin and Yang of
Buddhism, if you prefer. And what impassions me, be the proportions. No
the light without shade, not of vacuum without full, not of curves
without right-hand sides. The complementarity, all things considered ".
One thinks of the spiral of a spiral staircase contradicted by the
vertical bars of his slope. An icon of photography. With the silhouette
moving of Giacometti collected in a geometry of triangles of shade and
sun.
At the bottom of the living room, a fabric of Claude Viallat occupies
the wall. The glance collects, there, a density, there, a constellation
of coloured tasks. Always the harmony.
. . .

http://www.remue.net/sulfur/hasselmann02.html
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