Pfahl's triangle is a delightful play on the landscape

FRIDAY, JAN. 18: The Bermuda Triangle is a strange, mythical, legendary, universally known phenomenon.

Based on half-truths and coincidences, Bermudians or residents of the island have a much easier time explaining the Triangle than Bermuda itself.

The Triangle is simply that accepted.

The Triangle is an invisible structure lying south of the island and west stretching to Florida. It is “known” to have gobbled up boats, planes, ships, and submarines; almost anything that passes through its path.

Books, movies and articles facilitated its knowledge and Hollywood particularly influenced the fear of the Triangle by enhancing the mystery of the “Bermuda Triangle”.

So, when the artist/photographer John Pfahl visited Bermuda, it was perfect fodder for his oeuvre. 

Working at the time on a photographic project, known as Altered Landscapes, Pfahl added physical objects to heighten awareness of the subject photographed.

He changed the generally accepted “Bermuda Triangle” to Triangle Bermuda 1975 and made the shape a physical presence. Somewhat smaller than the better-known triangle, it is an image of a delightful play on the landscape, which seems to set the eye on another triangle in the ocean…. The rock.

What can’t be seen – is whether it is really a triangle or do we just assume so?  Our eye tells us, it must be so….

Pfahl came to Bermuda through his friendship with well-known artist Janet Fish.

Janet was educated in her formative years at the Bermuda High School for Girls and now lives in the US. 

She is the daughter of Florence Fish and granddaughter of Clark Voorhees, another well-known American artist who made his home at “Tranquillity” in Somerset in the 20’s. 

Curiously, roughly ten years after Pfahl made the Triangle Bermuda, 1975 photograph, a new age band (led by Dan and June Kuramoto — both third generation Japanese Americans) used this photograph on its album cover.

The band’s name was Hiroshima, and the Bermuda Triangle, of course, was a “jeu de mots” expressing the notion of explosive music!

This photograph along with numerous others are on display in the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art in the Botanical Gardens beginning today with the grand opening of Drawing with Light: Photography in Bermuda. Tom Butterfield is director and founder of the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art.