Verviers

Petit-Rechain and the Belgian Triangle

The photographic centrepiece of the Belgian wave of 1989–90: a black triangle with a light at each corner and one in the middle, taken at Petit-Rechain near Verviers in April 1990. It went round the world, was analysed at the University of Mons and the Royal Military Academy, and produced expert talk of plasma and of an image impossible to fake. In July 2011 Patrick Maréchal went on RTL-TVI and showed how he had done it: a piece of polystyrene painted black, four spotlights and a long exposure. He had kept it to himself for twenty-one years because the joke had got away from him.