Minor White

At 67 years old, Minor White physical status not available right now. We will update Minor White's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Minor Martin White (July 9, 1908-1908 – June 24, 1976) was an American photographer, theoretician, critic, and educator.

He combined an intense curiosity in how people perceived and understood photographs with a personal vision guided by a variety of spiritual and intellectual philosophies.

White started in 1937 and continued to his death in 1976, producing thousands of black-and-white and color photographs of landscapes, people, and abstract subjects matter, which gave the viewer both technical proficiency and a keen visual sense of light and shadow.

He taught several classes, lectures, and retreats on photography at the California School of Fine Arts, Rochester Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, other colleges, and even in his own home.

He spent a significant portion of his life as a closed gay man who was reluctant to speak out about his job security, and figure studies of men with whom he taught or met.

He aided in the beginning and was editor of Aperture, a photography magazine for many years.

White was dubbed one of America's best photographers after his death in 1976.

Early life: 1908–1937

White was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the only child of Charles Henry White, a bookkeeper, and Florence May White, a dressmaker. His first name came from his great, great grandfather from the White family, and his middle name was his mother's maiden name. He spent significant time with his grandparents in his early years. George Martin, his grandfather, was an amateur photographer who gave White his first camera in 1915. As a child, White loved playing in the huge garden at his grandparents' house, and it influenced his decision later on to study botany in college. White's parents went through a string of divorces beginning in 1916, and White lived with his mother and her parents during those times. In 1922, his parents reconciled for a short time before splitting in 1929.

He was already aware of his latent homosexuality by the time White graduated from high school. In 1927, he wrote about his feelings for men in his journal, to his surprise, his parents read his diary without his permission. He returned to live with his family while attending college after what he called a brief crisis period, after which he stayed home for the summer. His parents never discussed his homosexuality again. In 1927, White majored in botany at the University of Minnesota. He may not have completed the requirements for a science degree by the time he should have graduated in 1931, and he hasn't returned to the university for a long time.

He became very interested in writing during this period, and he began a personal journal titled "Memorable Fancies." He wrote poems, personal reflections about his life and his sexuality, excerpts from letters that he wrote to others, occasional diary-like entries about his daily life, and, later, detailed notes on his photography. He continued to fill the pages of his journal until he turned most of his energy into teaching around 1970. White returned to college in 1932 and concentrated on both writing and botany. With his prior work, he was able to graduate in 1934. He took some graduate classes in botany next year, but after six months, he decided he had no intention in becoming a scientist. He spent the next two years doing odd jobs and honing his writing skills. He began producing 100 sonnets on the subject of sexual passion, his first attempt at grouping his creative output during this period.

In late 1937, White decided to move to Seattle. He bought a 35mm Argus camera and rode a bus ride across the country to get to his destination. He came to Portland, Oregon, on his way and decided to remain there. He spent two plus years at the YMCA in Portland, where he first explored photography in depth for the first time. He taught his first class in photography to a select group of young adults at the YMCA. He also joined the Oregon Camera Club to learn more about photographers' own work and what photography means to them.

In 1938, White was offered a job as photographer for the Oregon Art Project, which was funded by the Works Progress Administration. One of his jobs was to photograph historic buildings in downtown Portland before they were demolished for a new riverfront development. He shot publicity for the Portland Civic Theatre, capturing their performances and photographing the actors and actresses at the same time.

In 1940, White was hired to teach photography at the La Grande Art Center in eastern Oregon. He jumped into his profession and taught classes three days a week, lectured on the art of local students, analyzed exhibits for the local newspaper, and hosted a weekly radio broadcast on Art Center activities. In his spare time, he travelled around the area photographing the landscape, farms, and small town halls. "When is Photography Creative?" was his first article on photography, which was also published in American Photography magazine two years ago.

In late 1941, White resigned from the Art Center and returned to Portland, Oregon, where he planned to start a commercial photography company. Three of his photographs were chosen by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for inclusion in their "Image of Freedom" exhibit this year. The museum acquired all three prints at the end of the exhibition, the first time his images had appeared in a public collection. The Portland Art Museum held his first one-man exhibition the following year, showcasing four collections of images he created while in eastern Oregon. "A period came to an end" with that display, he wrote in his journal.

White was accepted into the United States Army in April 1942 and denied his homosexuality from the recruiters. He left the majority of his negatives of historic Portland buildings with the Oregon Historical Society before leaving Portland. White served in Hawaii and Australia for the first two years of World War II, then later became Chief of the Divisional Intelligence Branch in the southern Philippines. He rarely photographed during this period, opting instead to write poetry and extended verse. "Elegies," "Free Verse for Speech," and "Minor Testament" three of his longer poems addressed the war and men's bonds in times of extreme hardship. In his photographic sequence Amputations, he will use some of the text from "Minor Testament."

After the war, White headed to New York City and enrolled in Columbia University. During his visit to New York, he met and became close friends with Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, who were working in the Museum of Modern Art's newly established photography department. White was given a job as photographer at the museum, but he spent many hours talking with and learning from Nancy Newhall, who said greatly inspired his photography and inspired his thinking.

In February 1946, White had the first of many meetings with photographer Alfred Stieglitz in New York. White was aware of Stieglitz' deep knowledge of photography from his various books, and in their talks, White accepted a lot of Stieglitz's argument of equivalence, where the image stands for something other than the subject matter, as well as his use of sequencing pictorial images. White expressed in his journal that he was still worried about becoming a good photographer at one of their meetings. "Have you ever been in love," Stieglitz asked him. "Yes" answered White, and Stieglitz replied, "You should photograph."

During this period, White met and became friends with some of the best photographers of the day, including Berenice Abbott, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and Harry Callahan. White had been offered by Steichen, the museum's photography department, but instead, the museum's curator, Ansel Adams, accepted Ansel Adams' invitation to assist him in the newly formed photography department at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) in San Francisco. White moved to San Francisco in July and spent many years in the Adams household. Although Adams taught White about his Zone System method of detecting and creating negatives, White used extensively in his own work. He wrote extensively about it, published a book, and taught the detection and growth techniques as well as the application of (pre)-visualization to his students.

While in San Francisco, White became close friends with Edward Weston in Carmel, and the remainder of his life, Weston had a major influence on White's photography and philosophy. "Stieglitz, Weston, and Ansel all gave me exactly what I needed at the time," he said later. I took one thing from each: the art of nature from Weston, and the Stieglitz's declaration that I was alive and I could photograph." Over the next several years, White spent a considerable amount of time photographing at Point Lobos, the location of some of Weston's most popular photographs, photographing many of the same subjects from completely different perspectives and creative purposes.

White, the primary instructor at CSFA, by mid-1947, had developed a three-year course that emphasized personal expressive photography. Imogen Cunningham, Lisette Model, and Dorothea Lange were among the best photographers of the time over the past six years in education, including Imogen Cunningham, Imogen Cunningham, and Dorothea Lange. During this period, White created his first collection of photographs and text in a non-narrative manner, a sequence he described as Amputations. Despite being scheduled to be displayed at the Legion of Honor's California Palace of Honor, the display was postponed due to White's refusal to allow the photographs to be displayed without text, which included some wording that spelled out uncertainty about America's postwar patriotism.

White's most prolific in terms of artistic output over the next three years. In addition to photographing hundreds of land and seascapes, he shot hundreds of photographs that developed into some of his most striking sequences. The three children in particular, including the three boys, were also struggling with his sexuality. "The Temptation of St. Anthony Is Mirrors, The Temptation of St. Anthony Is Mirrors, and the Fifth Sequence/Portrait of a Young Man as Actor all depict "the emotional turmoil he experiences over his passion and admiration for men."

In 1949, White bought a tiny Zeiss Ikonta camera and began a series of urban street photographs. He took nearly 6,000 photographs over the next four years, all inspired by Walt Whitman's revived interest in poetry. The initiative, which he described as City of Surf, featured photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown, the docks, people on the streets, and various parades and fairs around town.

The period 1951-52 is one of White's career's most influential years. Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, Frederick Sommer, and others discussed the possibility of creating a new journal of photography at the Aspen Institute, where Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Beaumont, and others discussed the prospect of creating a new journal of photography. Many of these individuals founded Aperture magazine shortly after. When White was accepted as editor and volunteered to write, the first issue appeared in April 1952. Aperture quickly became one of photography's most popular magazines, and White remained as editor until 1975.

In Long Beach, California, the father of 1952 White's father, who had been estranged for many years, died around the end of 1952. Walter Chappell introduced White to the I Ching, an ancient Chinese book of philosophy and divination, in 1953, and White continued to be inspired by and refer to this text throughout his life. He was particularly interested in the notions of yin and yang, in which apparently opposite or opposing forces may be thought of as complementary. White's teaching role was reduced back earlier this year, and as a result, he began to consider a change in his work. Beaumont Newhall had recently acted as the curator at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and Newhall had invited White to work with him as a curatorial assistant. He appeared on September 28--November 3, 1954 at Limelight Gallery in New York, and was included in the gallery's Great Photographs at the end of the year. Camera Consciousness, The Pictorial Image, and Accurate are three of the three exhibitions that showcased his special interests over the next three years. He joined the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), where he taught one day a week.

During this period, White's photographic output decreased due to his teaching and editorial work, but he continued to produce enough images that Sequence 10/Rural Cathedrals, which featured landscape photographs from upstate New York shot on regular and infrared film, by the end of 1955. Having been accepted as an instructor at RIT's new four-year photography program, as well as teaching classes and workshops at Ohio University and Indiana University, White was fully engaged in teaching by 1955. Walter Chappell left Rochester later this year to work at the George Eastman House. Chappell interacted with White on a long discussion of various Eastern faiths and ideologies. White began practicing Zen meditation and in his house, he adopted a Japanese style of decoration. Over the next two years, White and Chappell's discussions evolved into lengthy discourses about George Gurdjief's writing and philosophy. White became an adherent of Gurdjieff's teachings and began to incorporate Gurdjieff's thinking into the planning and delivery of his workshops. Gurdjieff's designs for White were not simply academic investigations, but rather journeys to experience, and they influenced a lot of his teaching and photography throughout his life.

White began creating his first color photographs during this same period. Despite being best known for his black-and-white photography, he made several color photographs. He has a nearly 9,000 35mm transparencies dating from 1955 to 1975.

In 1959, White opened a large exhibition of 115 photographs of his Sequence 13/Return to the Bud at the George Eastman House. It was his biggest exhibition to date. It later moved to the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. To accompany the exhibit, White was invited to teach a 10-days', all-expense-paid workshop in Portland. He used the funds to photograph landscapes and did nature research around the country. Following a mix of inquiry from Gurdjieff and Zen, he developed the idea for a full-time residential workshop in Rochester that students would learn from both formal sessions and an appreciation gained by the discipline of household chores and early morning workouts. He would continue this method of residential teaching until he died. In the early 1960s, White also studied hypnosis and weaved it into some of his teachings as a way to inspire students to enjoy photographs.

For the next several years, White continued to teach both privately and at RIT. During this time, he travelled around the United States in the summers photographing along the way. During this period, he referred to himself as "The Wanderer" in his journal, referring both literally and metaphorically as a result of his quest for understanding life. Michael Hoffman, a former colleague, collaborator, and later assumed the editorship of Aperture magazine, 1962-1962. Hoffman was later identified by White as the executor of his estate.

White was invited to help develop a newly established program in visual arts at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston. After being named as a visiting professor, White moved to suburban Arlington, Massachusetts, to expand the number of his residential workshops for select students. He began a new kind of sequence called Slow Dance, which he would later incorporate into his teachings shortly after moving to the Boston area. He continued to investigate how people comprehend and interpret photography, as well as including Gestalt psychology methods in his teachings. He began asking his students to learn the meaning of "equivalence" by requiring them to write such subjects as well as photographing them.

In 1966, White began to experience persistent pain in his chest, and his doctor diagnosed his ailment as angina. His illness remained throughout his life, prompting him to expand his meditation and spiritual studies. He turned to astrology in an attempt to improve his life, but his involvement in it became so vital that he requested all of his current and prospective students to have their horoscopes done. White's unconventional teaching methods were well established by this time in his life, and students who attended his workshops were both surprised and enlightened by the experience. "I really wanted to see the way he did, to capture my subjects in a way that didn't make them lifeless and two-dimensional," one student later became a Zen monk. I didn't know that Minor was showing us exactly that: not only did we see pictures, but we learned how to feel them, smell them, and taste them. He was showing us how to be photographers."

White began writing the text for Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations, which was his first monograph of his photographs, in late 1966. Aperture published the book three years later. It contained 243 of his photographs and text, including poems, notes from his journal, and other writings. For the book, Peter Bunnell, one of White's early students and then Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, wrote a long biography about White. White completed Sequence 1968, a collection of landscape photographs from his latest travels, at the same time. White designed and curated four major themed photography exhibitions at MIT, beginning with "Light7" in 1968 and followed by "Being Without Clothes" in 1970, "Octave of Prayer" in 1972, and "Celebrations" in 1974. Anyone could contribute images for the shows, and White spent a lot of time reviewing all of the submissions and selecting the final images.

And though his health was declining, White continued to teach extensively and photograph his own photographs. He returned to his writing and started "Consciousness in Photography and the Creative Audience," referring to his 1965 sequence Slow Dance and emphasizing the concept that such states of increased consciousness were necessary to properly read a photograph and understand its meaning. He applied for and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1970, and Consciousness in Photography and the Creative Audience became compulsory reading for a new course he taught at MIT called "Cognitive Audience." In 1971, he went to Puerto Rico to see more of his color photography, and in 1974 and 1975, he returned to Peru to teach and develop his own Gurdjieff research.

In 1975, White came to England to lecture at the Victoria and Albert Museum and teach classes at several colleges. He stayed on a whirlwinding travel schedule for several weeks before heading to the University of Arizona in Tucson to attend a symposium. He returned to Boston after nearly six weeks of travel and was hospitalized for several weeks. After this White's attention shifted even more inward, he photographed very little. He spent much of his time with his student Abe Frajndlich, who made a series of situational portraits of White around his house and in his garden. A few months before his death White wrote "The Diamond Lens of Fable," in which he related himself with Gilgamesh, Jason, and King Arthur, all heroes of old tales of lifelong adventures.

White died of a second heart attack while at his home on June 24, 1976. He left all of his personal archives and papers, as well as a large collection of his photographs, to Princeton University. He moved his family to Aperture to continue the work that he started there.

Source

Launching a career: 1937–1945

In late 1937, White and his family immigrated to Seattle. He bought a 35mm Argus camera and rode a bus ride across the country to his destination. On his way to Portland, Oregon, he stopped and decided to stay there. He worked at the YMCA in Portland for the next two years, and he did a lot of research in depth for the first time. He taught his first class in photography at the YMCA to a small group of young adults. He also joined the Oregon Camera Club to learn about photographers' own work and what photography means to them.

In 1938, White was given a job as a photographer for the Oregon Art Project, which was funded by the Works Progress Administration. One of his duties was to photograph historic buildings in downtown Portland before they were demolished for a new riverfront development. At the same time, he shot publicity photos for the Portland Civic Theatre, filming their performances and photographing portraits of the actors and actresses.

In 1940, White was hired to teach photography at the La Grande Art Center in eastern Oregon. He got immersed in his work and taught classes three days a week, lectured on the art of local students, analyzed exhibits for the local newspaper, and hosted a weekly radio show describing the Art Center's activities. In his spare time, he travelled around the area photographing the landscape, farms, and small town buildings. "When Is Photography Creative?" was also published in American Photography magazine two years later.

In late 1941, White resigned from the Art Center and returned to Portland, Oregon, where he planned to start a commercial photography business. Three of his photographs were selected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for inclusion in their "Image of Freedom" exhibition in 2003. All three prints were purchased at the end of the exhibit, the first time his images had landed in a public collection. The Portland Art Museum opened White's first one-man exhibition in eastern Oregon, displaying four series of photographs he created while there. "A period came to an end," he wrote in his journal.

White was drafted into the United States Army in April 1942 and denied his homosexuality from the recruiters. He left the majority of his negatives of historic Portland buildings with the Oregon Historical Society before leaving Portland. White spent the first two years of World War II in Hawaii and Australia, before becoming Chief of the Divisional Intelligence Branch in the southern Philippines. He seldom photographed during this period, opting instead to write poetry and extended verse. "Elegies," "Free Verse for Speech," and "Minor Testament," three of his longer poems, related to his experiences during the war and "manhood" under traumatic circumstances. Later in his photographic sequence Amputations, he would use some of the text from "Minor Testament."

After the war, White moved to New York City and enrolled in Columbia University. He met and became close friends with Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, who were working in the Museum of Modern Art's newly formed photography group while in New York. White was given a job as a photographer for the museum and spent many hours talking with and learning from Nancy Newhall, who said she had a major influence on his thinking about and his photography direction.

In February 1946, White had his first of many meetings with photographer Alfred Stieglitz in New York. White knew of Stieglitz's deep research into photography from his various books, and through their discussions, White adopted a portion of Stieglitz's equivalence, where the image represents something other than the subject matter and his use of sequencing pictorial images. White expressed in his journal that he was afraid he was going to be a good photographer at one of their meetings. "Have you ever been in love?" he wrote. White answered "yes" and Stieglitz replied, "Then you can photograph."

During this period, White met and became friends with some of the top photographers of the time, including Berenice Abbott, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and Harry Callahan. White was given a curatorial role at the museum by Steichen, but instead White accepted an invitation from Ansel Adams to support him with the newly created photography department at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA). In July, White moved to San Francisco and spent several years in the same house as Adams. Although Adams taught White about his Zone System approach to discovering and creating negatives, which White used extensively in his own work. He wrote a book and taught the assessment and growth process, as well as the use of (pre)-visualization to his students.

While in San Francisco, White became close friends with Edward Weston in Carmel, and for the remainder of his life, Weston had a major influence on White's photography and philosophy. "...Stieglitz, Weston, and Ansel all gave me exactly what I needed at that time," he said later. I took one thing from each: Ansel's love of nature from Weston, and Stieglitz's Stieglitz's announcement that I was alive and I could photograph." White spent a substantial amount of time over the next few years photographing Point Lobos, the location of some of Weston's most popular photos, photographing many of the same subjects with entirely different viewpoints and artistic intents.

By mid-1947, White had been the primary instructor at CSFA and had designed a three-year course that stressed personal expressive photography. Imogen Cunningham, Lisette Model, and Dorothea Lange all contributed as teachers over the next six years. During this period, White created his first collection of photographs and text in a non-narrative style, a sequence he described as Amputations. Despite the fact that the exhibition was supposed to be seen at the Legion of Honor's California Palace of Honour, it was eventually cancelled due to White's refusal to allow the photographs to be seen without text, which included some words that implied confusion about America's post-war patriotism.

White's most prolific in terms of creative output in the last three years. He shot hundreds of photographs that developed into some of his most memorable sequences in addition to photographing hundreds of land- and seascapes. In particular, three of his homosexuality were exhibited. "The Temptation of St. Anthony Is Mirrors" and the Fifth Sequence/Portrait of a Young Man as Actor portray "the emotional turmoil he experiences as a result of his passion and admiration for men."

White started photographing in 1949 with a small Zeiss Ikonta camera and began a series of urban street photographs. He took nearly 6,000 photographs over the next four years, all inspired by Walt Whitman's newfound interest in poetry. The initiative, which he referred to as City of Surf, featured photos of San Francisco's Chinatown, the docks, people on the streets, and several parades and fairs around town.

The period 1951-52 is one of White's most formative years. At the Aspen Institute, he attended a Conference on Photography, where Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, Frederick Sommer, and others discussed the possibility of publishing a new journal of photography. Many of these same individuals founded Aperture magazine shortly after. White volunteered for and was accepted as editor, and the first issue appeared in April 1952. Aperture quickly became one of photography's most popular magazines, and White stayed as editor until 1975.

White's father, who had been estranged for many years, died in Long Beach, California, about the end of 1952. Walter Chappell introduced White to the I Ching, an ancient Chinese book of philosophy and divination, in 1953, and White continued to be influenced by and refer to this text throughout his life. He was particularly interested in the notions of yin and yang, in which apparently opposing or opposing forces may be considered as compatible. White's teaching role was reduced back by a reorganization at CSFS earlier this year, and as a result, he started to consider a change in his role. Beaumont Newhall had been the curator at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and Newhall had invited White to work with him as a curatorial assistant. He appeared on September 28 to November 3, 1954 at the Limelight Gallery in New York, and was included in the gallery's Great Photographs at the end of the year. During the next three years, White organized three themed exhibitions that showcased his particulars: Camera Consciousness, The Pictorial Image, and Accurate. He joined the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in 1955, where he taught for one day a week.

During this period, White's photographic output dropped due to his teaching and editorial work, but he continued to produce enough photographs that Sequence 10/Rural Cathedrals, which featured landscape photographs from upstate New York shot on both regular and infrared film, that by the end of 1955, he had created a new sequence. Having been recruited as an instructor at RIT's newly four-year photography program, as well as teaching classes and workshops at Ohio University and Indiana University, by 1955, White was completely involved in teaching. Walter Chappell retired from Rochester later this year to work at the George Eastman House. Chappell interacted with White in long discussions of many Eastern faiths and philosophies. White began practicing Zen meditation and then added a Japanese style of decoration to his house. The discussions between White and Chappell morphed into long discourses on George Gurdjief's writing and philosophy over the next two years. White gradually became an adherent of Gurdjieff's teachings and began to incorporate Gurdjieff's theories into the design and implementation of his workshops. Gurdjieff's White Papers were not simply academic exercises, but rather experiences, and they were influential in shaping much of his teaching and photography throughout the remainder of his life.

During this same time, White began to produce his first color photographs. Although he is best known for his black-and-white photography, he did produce a number of color photographs. He has a nearly 9,000 35mm transparencies dating from 1955 to 1975.

In 1959, White mounted a large exhibition of 115 photographs of his Sequence 13/Return to the Bud at the George Eastman House. It was his biggest exhibition to date. Later that year, it returned to the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. To accompany the exhibition, White was invited to teach a 10-days' all-expense-paid workshop in Portland. He used the funds to photograph landscapes and conducted nature studies around the country. He developed the idea for a full-time residential workshop in Rochester, which students would learn from both formal sessions and, eventually, from a deep appreciation gained by the discipline of household chores and early morning workouts. He would continue teaching in this way until he died. In the early 1960s, White began studying hypnosis and integrated it into some of his classes as a way of assisting students in learning about photographs.

For the next several years, White continued to teach both privately and at RIT. During this period, he travelled through the United States in the summers, photographing along the way. He referred to himself as "The Wanderer" in his journal, a term that had both literal and metaphorical meanings as a result of his quest for meaning in life. Michael Hoffman, a fellow, acquaintance, and later assumed Aperture magazine's editorship, was born in 1962. Hoffman was later identified by White as the executor of his estate.

White was invited to assist design a newly established program in visual arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston. After being named as a visiting Professor, White moved to suburban Arlington, Massachusetts, in order to expand the number of his residential workshops for selected students. He started slow dancing, which would later be integrated into his teachings shortly after moving to the Boston area. He continued to investigate how people comprehend and interpret photography, and began to incorporate Gestalt psychology techniques into his teachings. He began requiring students to learn the meaning of "equivalence" in addition to photographing them.

White began experiencing chest pains in 1966, and his doctor diagnosed his ailment as angina. His symptoms remained throughout his life, prompting him to refocus on spiritual issues and meditation. He turned to astrology to expand his knowledge of life, and his passion for it became so important that he ordered all of his current and prospective students to have their horoscopes completed. By this time in his life, White's unorthodox teaching methods were well established, and students who attended his workshops were both amazed and inspired by the experience. "I really wanted to see the way he did, to capture my subjects in a way that didn't make them lifeless and two-dimensional," one student who later became a Zen monk said. Minor was showing us exactly what we were seeing: not only to see pictures but also smell them and taste them. He was showing us how to be photographers.

In late 1966, White began writing the text for Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations, his first monograph of his photographs. Aperture published it three years later. It featured 243 of his photographs and text, including poems, notes from his journal, and other writings. Peter Bunnell, one of White's early students and later Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, wrote a long biography of White for the book. During the same time, White completed Sequence 1968, a collection of landscape photos from his latest travels. White conceived and curated four major themed photography exhibitions at MIT, beginning with "Light7" in 1968 and followed by "Being Without Clothes" in 1970, "Octave of Prayer" in 1972, and "Celebrations" in 1974. Anyone could post photos for the shows, but White spent a long time looking at all of the submissions and selecting the final images.

Despite declining health, White continued to lecture extensively and take his own photographs. He dedicated more time to writing and started a long text he wrote titled "Consciousness in Photography and the Creative Audience," in which he referred to his 1965 sequence Slow Dance and suggested that certain states of heightened consciousness were required to properly read a photograph and understand its meaning. To complete his project, he applied for and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1970, and Consciousness in Photography and the Creative Audience became mandatory reading for a new course he taught at MIT called "Cognitive Audience." In 1971, he went to Puerto Rico to see more of his color photography, and in 1974 and 1975, he returned to Peru to teach and expand his own Gurdjieff research.

In 1975, White travelled to England to lecture at the Victoria and Albert Museum and to teach classes at various colleges. He stayed on a whizzing travel schedule for several weeks before heading to the University of Arizona in Tucson to attend a symposium. He returned to Boston after nearly six weeks of travel and was hospitalized for several weeks. This White's obsession became even more focused, and he didn't photograph very well. He spent a lot of time with his partner, Abe Frajndlich, who made a series of situational portraits of White around his house and in his garden. White wrote a short article in Parabola magazine titled "The Diamond Lens of Fable," in which he compared himself to Gilgamesh, Jason, and King Arthur, all heroes of old tales about lifelong journeys.

White died of a second heart attack while working at his house on June 24, 1976. He bequeathed all of his personal archives and papers, as well as a large collection of his photographs, to Princeton University. He moved his family to Aperture so they could continue with the work he started there.

Mid-career: 1946–1964

White had the first of many meetings with photographer Alfred Stieglitz in New York in February 1946. White was aware of Stieglitz' deep appreciation of photography from his various books, and White shared a portion of Stieglitz's equivalence's view, where the image stands for something other than the subject matter, as well as his use of sequencing pictorial images. At one of their meetings, White wrote in his journal that he disapproved the prospect that he was about to become a good photographer. "Have you ever been in love?" Stieglitz asked him, "Have you ever been in love?" he wrote. White replied "yes" and Stieglitz responded, "Then you can photograph."

During this period, White met and became friends with some of the best photographers of the day, including Berenice Abbott, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and Harry Callahan. Steichen, the museum's photography department's director, offered White a curatorial position at the museum, but instead White accepted a letter from Ansel Adams to assist him in the redesigned photography department at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) in San Francisco. In July, White moved to San Francisco and spent several years in the same building as Adams. When Adams taught White about his Zone System of exposing and creating negatives, White used extensively in his own writing. He wrote extensively about it, published a book, and taught the detection and growth process as well as the practice of (pre)visualization to his students.

While in San Francisco, White became close friends with Edward Weston in Carmel, and throughout his life, Weston had a major influence on White's photography and philosophy. Later, he said, "Stieglitz, Weston, and Ansel all gave me exactly what I needed at the time." I took one thing from each: technique from Ansel, Weston's love of nature, and Stieglitz's affirmation that I was alive and I could photograph." White spent a considerable amount of time over the next few years photographing Point Lobos, the site of some of Weston's most famous photographs, photographing many of the same subjects with entirely different viewpoints and creative intents.

By mid-1947, White had been the primary instructor at CSFA and had created a three-year course that emphasized personal expressive photography. He brought together some of the best photographers of the time, including Imogen Cunningham, Lisette Model, and Dorothea Lange over the next six years. During this time, White created his first collection of photographs and text in a non-narrative manner, a sequence he described as Amputations. Despite being supposed to be seen at the Legion of Honor's in California, the exhibition was postponed because White refused to allow the photographs to be shown without text, which included some words that expressed his confusion about America's post-war patriotism.

The next three years were some of White's most prolific in terms of creative output. He made scores of photographs that developed into some of his most memorable sequences in addition to shooting hundreds of land- and seascapes. In particular, three children in particular displayed their continuing struggles with his sexuality. "The Temptation of St. Anthony Is Mirrors, The Temptation of a Young Man," the actor's fifth Sequence/Portrait of a Young Man as Actor depict "the mental turmoil he suffers as a result of his passion and admiration for men."

White started a small Zeiss Ikonta camera in 1949 and began a series of urban street photographs. He took nearly 6,000 photographs over the next four years, all inspired by Walt Whitman's newfound obsession with poetry. Photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown, the docks, pedestrians on the streets, and various parades and fairs around town were included in the project, which he named City of Surf.

The period 1951-52 is one of White's most significant times in his career. Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, Frederick Sommer, and others discussed the possibility of publishing a new journal of photography at the Aspen Institute. Many of these individuals formed Aperture magazine just after. White volunteered for and was accepted as editor, and the first issue appeared in April 1952. Aperture quickly became one of the most popular photography journals, and White stayed as editor until 1975.

In Long Beach, California, the father of 1952 White's father, who had been estranged for many years, died before his funeral. Walter Chappell, an ancient Chinese book of philosophy and divination, first introduced White to the I Ching in 1953, and White continued to be inspired by and refer to this text throughout the remainder of his life. He was particularly interested in the notions of yin and yang, in which apparently opposing or contradictory forces can be portrayed as complementary. A reorganization at CSFS later that year resulted in White's teaching job being reduced, and as a result, he began to consider a change in his work. Beaumont Newhall had just been the curator at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and Newhall had invited White to serve as a curatorial assistant. He appeared at Lakelight Gallery in New York on September 28 to November 3, 1954, and was included in the gallery's Great Photographs at the end of the year. Over the next three years, White presented three themed exhibitions that reflected his particulars: Camera Consciousness, The Pictorial Image, and Accurate. He joined the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), where he taught one day a week in 1955.

During this period, White's photographic output dropped due to his teaching and editorial work, but he maintained enough photographs that by the end of 1955, he had created Sequence 10/Rural Cathedrals, which featured landscape photographs from upstate New York shot on regular and infrared film. After being hired as an instructor at RIT's new four-year photography program as well as teaching classes and workshops at Ohio University and Indiana University, by 1955 White was fully engaged in teaching. Walter Chappell began working at the George Eastman House in Rochester later this year. Chappell's White House was involved in long discussions of various Eastern faiths and philosophies. White began practicing Zen meditation and then added a Japanese style of decoration to his house. The conversations between White and Chappell in the ensuing two years morphed into long discussions of George Gurdjief's writing and philosophy. White became a fan of Gurdjieff's teachings and began to incorporate Gurdjieff's theories into the planning and delivery of his workshops. Gurdjieff's White Papers were not simply academic experiments but guides to experience, and they heavily influenced much of his teaching and photography throughout the rest of his life.

White began producing his first color photographs during this time. Despite being best known for his black-and-white photography, he did make many color photographs. His collection holds nearly 9,000 35mm transparencies from 1955 to 1975.

In 1959, White mounted a large exhibition of 115 photographs of his Sequence 13/Return to the Bud at the George Eastman House. It was his best show to date. It later travelled to the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. To accompany the display, White was invited to lead a 10-day, all-expense-paid workshop in Portland. He used the funds to photograph landscapes and did nature research around the country. Following a blend of thought from Gurdjief and Zen, and an appreciation gained by the discipline of household chores and early morning workouts, he developed the idea for a full-time residential workshop in Rochester, which students would learn from both formal sessions and later in the morning. He would continue teaching in this style until he died. White also studied hypnosis and integrated it into some of his lectures in the early 1960s as a way to inspire students to experience photographs.

For the next several years, White continued to teach both privately and at RIT. During this time, he travelled around the United States in the summers, photographing along the way. He referred to himself as "the Wanderer" in his journal, a term that had both literal and metaphorical meanings in response to his quest for meaning in life. Michael Hoffman, a mentor, colleague, and later assumed the editorship of Aperture magazine, in 1962. White subsequently appointed Hoffman to be the executor of his will.

White was invited to help develop a newly established program in visual arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston, in 1965. After being appointed as a visiting professor, White moved to suburban Arlington, Massachusetts, to expand the size of his residential workshops for selected students. He started slow dancing, which would later be integrated into his teachings shortly after moving to the Boston area. He continued to investigate how people perceive and interpret photography and introduced Gestalt psychology techniques into his teachings. He began requiring students to write such subjects as well as photograph them to help them understand the meaning of "equivalence."

In 1966, White began to experience intermittent pain in his chest, and his doctor diagnosed his ailment as angina. His symptoms remained throughout his life, leading him to refocus on spiritual topics and meditation. He began astrology in an attempt to improve his knowledge of life, and his passion for it became so important that he ordered all of his current and prospective students to have their horoscopes completed. By this time in his life, White's unconventional teaching methods had been well established, and students who attended his lectures were both intrigued and inspired by the experience. "I really wanted to see the way he did, to capture my subjects in a way that didn't render them lifeless and two-dimensional," a Zen monk said. I didn't know that Minor was teaching us precisely what we were missing: not only to see pictures, but also to smell them, taste them. He was showing us how to be photographers."

In late 1966, White began writing the text for Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations, the first monograph of his photographs, and three years later Aperture published it. It contained 243 of his photographs and text, as well as poems, notes from his journal, and other writings. Peter Bunnell, one of White's early students and later Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, wrote a lengthy biography of White for the book. White completed Sequence 1968, a collection of landscape photos from his latest travels, at the same time. White conceived and curated four major themed photography exhibitions at MIT, beginning with "Light7" in 1968 and followed by "Being Without Clothes" in 1970, "Octave of Prayer" in 1972, and "Celebrations" in 1974. Anyone could submit photos for the show, but White spent a considerable amount of time personally reviewing all of the submissions and choosing the final images.

Even as his health was declining, White continued to teach extensively and produce his own photographs. He began dedicating more time to writing and launching "Consciousness in Photography and the Creative Audience," in which he referred to his 1965 film "Consciousness" and suggested that certain states of heightened awareness were necessary to properly read a photograph and recognize its meaning. He applied for and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1970, and Consciousness in Photography and the Creative Audience became mandatory reading for a new course he taught at MIT called "Critic Audience." In 1971, he went to Puerto Rico to see more of his color photography, and in 1974 and 1975, he went to Peru to teach and expand his Gurdjieff studies.

In 1975, White went to England to speak at the Victoria and Albert Museum and teach classes at several colleges. He stayed on a whirlwindical travel schedule for many weeks before heading to the University of Arizona in Tucson to attend a symposium. He returned to Boston after nearly six weeks of travel and was hospitalized for several weeks. White's interest increased even more, and he took very little photographs. Abe Frajndlich, his student, who produced a series of situational portraits of White around his house and in his garden, spent a significant amount of his time with him. White had a short article about lifelong journeys a few months before his death in which he related himself with Gilgamesh, Jason, and King Arthur.

White died of a second heart attack while at his home on June 24, 1976. He bequeathed all of his personal archives and papers, as well as a large collection of his photographs, to Princeton University. He moved his family to Aperture so that they could keep the jobs he started there.

Late career: 1965–1974

In 1965, White was invited to help develop a newly established program in visual arts at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston. After being named as a visiting professor, White moved to suburban Arlington, Massachusetts, in order to expand the number of his residential workshops for selected students. He began working in the Boston area and created a new kind of sequence named Slow Dance, which he would later incorporate into his teachings. He continued to investigate how people comprehend and interpret photography and introduced Gestalt psychology techniques into his teachings. He began requiring students to learn the meaning of "equivalence" in addition to photographing them.

In 1966, White began complaining of periodic pain in his chest, and his doctor diagnosed his ailment as angina. His illnesses stayed throughout his life, causing him to expand his study of spirituality and meditation. In an attempt to improve his knowledge of life, he turned to astrology, and his obsession with it became so significant that he ordered all of his current and prospective students to have their horoscopes completed. By this time in his life, White's unorthodox teaching methods had been well established, and students who attended his workshops were both amazed and inspired by the experience. "I really wanted to see the way he did, to capture my subjects in a way that didn't render them lifeless and two-dimensional," one student who later became a Zen monk said. Minor was preparing us precisely that: not only were we shown pictures, but also smelled them, and tasted them. He was showing us how to be photographers.

In late 1966, White started writing the text for Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations, the first monograph of his photographs, and Aperture published it three years later. It featured 243 of his photographs and text, as well as poems, notes from his journal, and other writings. Peter Bunnell, one of White's early students and later Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, wrote a lengthy biography of White for the book. During this same period, White completed Sequence 1968, a collection of landscape photos from his latest travels. White planned and curated four major themed photography exhibits at MIT, beginning with "Light7" in 1968 and then "Being without Clothes" in 1970, "Octave of Prayer" in 1972, and "Celebrations" in 1974. Anyone could submit photos for the show, but White spent a lot of time personally reviewing all of the submissions and selecting the final images.

And as his health was declining, White continued to teach extensively and create his own photographs. He dedicated more time to writing and started "Consciousness in Photography and the Audience," a text he wrote in 1965, in which he referred to the fact that certain states of increased consciousness were required to fully read a photograph and understand its meaning. He applied for and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1970, and Consciousness in Photography and the Creative Audience became mandatory reading for a new course he taught at MIT, "Cognitive Audience." In 1971, he went to Puerto Rico to photograph more of his color photography, and in 1974 and 1975, he returned to Peru to teach and develop his own Gurdjieff research.

In 1975, White travelled to England to lecture at the Victoria and Albert Museum as well as teach classes at various colleges. He stayed on a whirlwindry travel schedule for several weeks before heading straight to University of Arizona in Tucson to attend a symposium. He returned to Boston after nearly six weeks of traveling, and was hospitalized for several weeks. White's interest increased even more inward, and he took only very little photographs. Abe Frajndlich, a student of White, photographed a series of situational portraits of White around his house and in his garden, spent much of his time with him. A few months before his death, White published "The Diamond Lens of Fable" in which he compared himself to Gilgamesh, Jason, and King Arthur, all heroes of old tales about lifelong journeys.

White died of a second heart attack while working at his house on June 24, 1976. He bequeathed all of his personal archives and papers, as well as a large collection of his photographs, to Princeton University. He moved his family to Aperture in order to continue the work that was started there.

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