Minor White: Rites & Passages- His Photographs Accompanied by Excerpts from his Diaries and Letters; Biographical Essay by James Baker Hall (An Aperture Monograph) - Softcover

James Baker Hall

Softcover

ISBN 10: 089381069X ISBN 13: 9780893810696

Publisher: Aperture, 1978

Synopsis

Minor Martin White (1908 - 1976) was 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 took 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 many classes, workshops and retreats on photography at the California School of Fine Arts, Rochester Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, other schools, and in his own home. He lived much of his life as a closeted gay man, afraid to express himself publicly for fear of loss of his teaching jobs, and some of his most compelling images are figure studies of men whom he taught or with whom he had relationships. He helped start and for many years was editor of the photography magazine Aperture. After his death in 1976, White was hailed as one of America's greatest photographers. Ansel Adams said of White, "Minor White is one of the greatest of photographers. I do not make this statement lightly ...The sheer beauty of the medium of photography is tuned to the exact meaning of the visualized image." In Minor White: Rites & Passages, James Baker Hall has made a selection of Minor White's superb photographs and accompanied them with extensive, revealing excerpts from White's letters. They are all amplified by James Baker Hall's perceptive observations of the artist-teacher at work. James Baker Hall (1935 - 2009) was an American poet, novelist, photographer and teacher. He was Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Kentucky - Lexington for over 30 years. Hall was prolific as both a writer and a visual artist, publishing widely in both arenas.

About this title

About the Author:

Minor White was born in Minneapolis in 1908 and educated at the University of Minnesota. His first serious photography was done in Portland, Oregon, for the Works Progress Administration in 1938, and his first one-man exhibition was at the Portland Art Museum in 1942.

In 1946, Minor White joined the faculty at the California School of Fine Arts. Newly stimulated by meetings with Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, he embarked on his own photography. In 1952, he founded Aperture, a quarterly of photography. The following year, he joined the staff of George Eastman House and two years later became associated with the faculty of the Rochester Institute of Technology. In 1965 until his death in 1976, he taught photography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

An internationally recognized artist, his photographs are represented in major museums and private collections. There have been over forty one-man exhibitions of his work.

Review:

"Minor White is one of the greatest of photographers. I do not make this statement lightly. . . . The sheer beauty of the medium of photography is tuned to the exact meaning and feeling of the visualized image. His photographs are a fresh revelation and a new enticement to touch and embrace worlds beyond human experience."--Ansel Adams

"The quality of his prints is inseparable from the beauty and mystery of his objects; print and scene alike are discoveries by an inspired and loving perception. Through them, we divine the man behind the picture, his solitude, his awed vision of a purer world."--Meyer Schapiro, University Professor Emeritus, Columbia University

"Minor White [is] one of the most important photographers of modern times, whose classic work with the camera put him in the company of photographic artists such as Ansel Adams, Edward Steichen, and Alfred Stieglitz."--The New York Times

"Of those photographers who reached their creative maturity after the Second World War, none has been more influential than Minor White. . . . Indeed, White's omnipresence in the photographic world has made it easy to forget at times that he has remained first of all an artist: a photographer who has made some of the medium's most memorable pictures."--John Szarkowski, Director of the Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art

About this edition

• Publisher: Aperture
• Publication date: 1978
• ISBN 10: 089381069X
• ISBN 13: 9780893810696
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 141