Minor White: Rites and Passages (Aperture No. 80)

His photographs accompanied by excerpts from his diaries and letters. Biographical essay by James Baker Hall.

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.