Minor White
Minor White
Minor Martin Whitewas an American photographer, theoretician, critic and educator. He combined an intense interest in how people viewed and understood photographs with a personal vision that was guided by a variety of spiritual and intellectual philosophies. Starting in Oregon in 1937 and continuing until he died in 1976, White made thousands of black-and-white and color photographs of landscapes, people and abstract subject matter, created with both technical mastery and a strong visual sense of light and shadow. He taught...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth9 July 1908
CountryUnited States of America
A very receptive state of mind...not unlike a sheet of film itself - seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second's exposure conceives a life in it.
Photographers who come up with power never get accused of imitating anyone else even though they photograph the same broom, same street, same portraits.
We emphasized the creativeness that happens at the moment of seeing over the kind that takes place in the dark room.
In putting images together I become active, and excitement is of another order - synthesis overshadows analysis.
Camera and eye are together a time machine with which the mind and human being can do the same kind of violence to time and space as dreams.
If I have anything to give you through camera, it must be of myself. … A gnawing burns inside … to make something of myself worth giving.
Different levels of photography require different levels of understanding and skill. A "press the button, let George do the rest" photographer needs little or no technical knowledge of photography. A zone system photographer takes more responsibility. He visualizes before he presses the button, and afterwards calibrates for predictable print values.
Some of the young photographers today enter photography where I leave off. My "grandchildren" astound me. What I worked for they seem to be born with. So I wonder where Their affirmations of Spirit will lead. My wish for them is that their unfolding proceeds to fullness of Spirit, however astonishing or anguished their lives.
Students were taught by doing.
A very receptive state of mind... not unlike a sheet of film itself - seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second's exposure conceives a life in it.
When I looked at things for what they are I was fool enough to persist in my folly and found that each photograph was a mirror of my Self.
I have often photographed when I am not in tune with nature but the photographs look as if I had been. So I conclude that something in nature says, 'Come and take my photograph.' So I do, regardless of how I feel.
Watching the way the current moves a blade of grass - sometimes I've seen that happen and it has just turned me inside out.
Sometimes we work so fast that we don't really understand what's going on in front of the camera. We just kind of sense that, 'Oh my God, it's significant!' and photograph impulsively while trying to get the exposure right. Exposure occupies my mind while intuition frames the images.