62 Facts About Minor White

Minor Martin White was an American photographer, theoretician, critic, and educator.

Minor White taught at the California School of Fine Arts, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in his home.

Minor White helped start the photography magazine Aperture, considered the only periodical produced for, and by, photographers practicing the medium as a fine art.

From 1916 to 1922, Minor White's parents went through a series of separations.

Minor White's parents reconciled in 1922, remaining together until they finally divorced in 1929.

When Minor White graduated from high school, he was aware of his latent homosexuality.

Minor White continued with the journal until 1970, when most of his energy was directed to teaching.

In 1932, Minor White re-entered the university, studied botany and writing, and graduated in 1934.

Minor White spent the next two years doing odd jobs and exploring his writing skills.

Minor White purchased a 35mm Argus camera and hopped a bus to his intended destination.

Minor White taught his first photography class at the YMCA to a small group of young adults.

Minor White joined the Oregon Camera Club and learned how photographers discuss their craft and work.

In 1938, Minor White was offered a job as photographer for the Oregon Art Project, funded by the Works Progress Administration.

In 1940, Minor White was hired to teach photography at the La Grande Art Center in eastern Oregon.

Minor White quickly became immersed in his work, taught classes three days a week, lectured on art to local students, reviewed exhibitions for the local newspaper, and delivered a weekly radio broadcast about activities at the Art Center.

Minor White resigned from the Art Center in late 1941 and returned to Portland, intending to start a commercial photography business.

Minor White spent the first two years of World War II in Hawaii and in Australia.

Minor White rarely photographed during this time, choosing to write poetry and extended verse.

Minor White spent many hours talking with Nancy Newhall, who he said educated him and strongly influenced his thinking and direction in photography.

In February 1946, Minor White had the first of several meetings with photographer Alfred Stieglitz in New York.

Minor White had read Stieglitz's various writings on photography and understood some of his theories.

Minor White wrote in his journal that he expressed his doubt that he was ready to become a serious photographer at one of their meetings.

Minor White wrote extensively about it, published a book and taught the exposure and development method as well as the practice of -visualization to his students.

In 1949, Minor White purchased a small Zeiss Ikonta camera and began a series of urban street photographs.

Minor White participated in a Conference on Photography at the Aspen Institute, where the idea of creating a new journal of photography was discussed by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, Frederick Sommer and others.

Minor White volunteered for and was approved as editor, and the first issue appeared in April 1952.

Aperture quickly became one of the most influential magazines about photography, and Minor White remained as editor until 1975.

Minor White continued to be influenced by and refer to this text throughout the rest of his life.

Minor White invited White to work with him as a curatorial assistant.

Minor White began practicing Zen meditation and adopted a Japanese style of decoration in his house.

Minor White gradually became an adherent of Gurdjieff's teachings and started to incorporate Gurdjieff's thinking into the design and implementation of his workshops.

Gurdjieff's concepts, for Minor White, were not just intellectual exercises but guides to experience, and they greatly influenced much of his approach to teaching and photography throughout the rest of his life.

Minor White's archive contains nearly 9,000 35mm transparencies taken between 1955 and 1975.

Minor White took advantage of the funding to photograph landscapes and did nature studies across the country.

Minor White would continue this style of residential teaching until he died.

Minor White continued to teach extensively both privately and at RIT for the next several years.

Minor White later named Hoffman to be the executor of his will.

In 1965 Minor White was invited to help design a newly formed program in visual arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston.

Minor White continued to explore how people understand and interpret photography and began to incorporate techniques of Gestalt psychology into his teachings.

Minor White's symptoms continued throughout the rest of his life, leading him to intensify his study of spiritual matters and meditation.

Minor White turned to astrology, and his interest in it became so significant that he required all of his current and prospective students to have their horoscopes completed.

Minor White began writing the text for Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations, which was the first monograph of his photographs, in late 1966, and three years later the book was published by Aperture.

Anyone could submit images for the shows, and Minor White spent a great deal of time personally reviewing all of the submissions and selecting the final images.

Minor White continued to teach extensively and make his own photographs even though his health was declining.

Minor White devoted more and more time to his writing and began a long text he called "Consciousness in Photography and the Creative Audience," in which he referred to his 1965 sequence Slow Dance and advanced the idea that certain states of heightened awareness were necessary to truly read a photograph and understand its meaning.

In 1975 Minor White traveled to England to lecture at the Victoria and Albert Museum and to teach classes at various colleges.

Minor White continued on a hectic travel schedule for several weeks, then flew directly to the University of Arizona in Tucson to take part in a symposium there.

Minor White spent much of his time with his student Abe Frajndlich, who made a series of situational portraits of White around his home and in his garden.

On June 24,1976, Minor White died of a second heart attack while working at his home.

Minor White bequeathed all of his personal archives and papers, along with a large collection of his photographs, to Princeton University.

Minor White left his house to Aperture so they could continue the work he started there.

Originally intending to pursue fashion photography, it was his exposure to Minor White that drew him to reconsider photography as vehicle for personal artistic expression.

Minor White became a mentor to Bunnell and recruited him to join the staff of Aperture magazine.

Minor White was greatly influenced by Stieglitz's concept of "equivalence," which Minor White interpreted as allowing photographs to represent more than their subject matter.

Minor White intended these to be interpreted by the viewer as something more than what they actually present.

One gets the impression that Minor White did not develop as an artist in a linear sense so much as he oscillated between conflicting poles.

When Minor White began working as a photographer at the Museum of Modern Art in 1945 he became friends with Nancy Newhall, who was organizing a retrospective of Edward Weston's photographs for the museum.

Newhall had a gift for creating highly distinct groupings of images, and Minor White said later that her installation of the Weston exhibit was a revelation to him.

Minor White described what he called a sequence as a "cinema of stills" that he felt would impart a "feeling-state" created by both the photographer and the personality of the individual viewer.

Minor White said he wanted his sequences to be subjective interpretations, and as such he wanted viewers to gain insights into themselves by allowing them to contemplate his work as they saw fit.

Minor White felt that this change illustrated the simultaneous reality and unreality in a photograph.

Minor White wrote extensively about his thought about sequences, both in his journal and in articles.