Figure 1 – Shadow of the ironwork railing on the steps of the Immaculate Conception Church, Salem, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

The last couple of days have been pretty wretched here in Massachusetts’ North Shore. So I am going to default today to a photograph that I took last week. It is Figure 1 and shows the shadow of the ironwork railing on the stairs of Salem’s historic Immaculate Conception Church. Symmetrical abstracts, here shadow and stone, reflect, quite literally the idea of symmetry in nature. There are so many angles in this image, but they all repeat in wonderful unison. And I will point out an apparent paradox. What you have are parallel lines. The first set of parallels are the edges the steps, front and back. The second set is the shadows of parallel rails of the fence.  But while parallel lines mathematically stretch out to meet in infinity, every time the two sets intersect, the parallel shadows are diverted from this task and change direction. As a result step by step the shadow parallels on the vertical part of the steps shift to the left, while the shadow parallels on the surface of the steps shift to the right. Ain’t the complexity of nature wonderful?

I am ready to quote Edith Wharton today, who said:

“The desire for symmetry, for balance, for rhythm in form as well as in sound, is one of the most inveterate of human instincts”