Minor Martin White (July 9, 1908 - June 24, 1976) is an American photographer, theoretician, critic, and educator. He combines an intense interest in how people view and understand photographs with a personal vision guided by various spiritual and intellectual philosophies. Beginning in Oregon in 1937 and continuing until he died in 1976, White made thousands of black and white landscape photographs and colors, people and abstract material, created with a technical mastery and a strong visual sense of light and shadow. He teaches many classes, workshops and photography retreats at the California School of Fine Arts, Rochester Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, other schools, and in his own home. She lived most of her life as a confined gay man, afraid to express herself publicly for fear of losing her teaching job, and some of her most fascinating drawings are the study of the male character she teaches or with whom she has relationships. He helped start and for many years was the editor of Aperture photography magazine. After his death in 1976, White was hailed as one of America's greatest photographers.
Video Minor White
Biography
Initial life: 1908-1937
White was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the only child of Charles Henry White, the bookkeeper, and Florence May White, a tailor. His first name came from his great-grandfather from the White family, and his middle name was his mother's maiden name. During his early years he spent most of his time with his grandparents. His grandfather, George Martin, was an amateur photographer and gave White his first camera in 1915. When a White boy enjoyed playing in the big garden at his grandparents' house, and this influenced his later decision to study botany in college. White's parents went through a series of separations that began in 1916, and during that period White lived with his mother and his parents. His parents made peace for a while in 1922 and stayed together until they divorced in 1929.
By the time White graduated from high school he was already aware of his latent homosexuality. In 1927 he wrote about his feelings toward the man in his diary, and the anxiety of his parents reading his diary without permission. After what was called a brief crisis period, where he left home for the summer, he returned to live with his family when he started college. His parents never talked about his homosexuality anymore. White entered the University of Minnesota in 1927 and majored in botany. By the time he was supposed to graduate in 1931 he had not met the requirements for a science degree, and he left the university for a while.
During this period he became very interested in writing, and he started a private journal he called "Memorable Fancies." In it he wrote poetry, deep thoughts about his life and his struggles with his sexuality, quotes from letters he wrote to others, daily entries like daily accounts of his daily life, and, later, extensive notes on his photography. He continued to fill his journals until he directed most of his energies to teach around 1970. In 1932, White reentered the university and studied both writing and botany. With prior credit, he was able to graduate in 1934. The following year he took several graduate classes in botany, but after six months he decided that he had no real interest in becoming a scientist. He spent the next two years doing odd jobs and exploring his writing skills. During this period he began to create a set of 100 sonnets with the theme of sexual love, his first attempt to classify his creative output.
Launch career: 1937-1945
In late 1937 White decided to move to Seattle. He bought a 35mm Argus camera and traveled the bus across the country to his destination. He stopped in Portland, Oregon, on his way and decided to stay there. For the next 2-1/2 years he stayed at the YMCA in Portland while he explored photography in depth for the first time. It was at the YMCA that he taught his first class in photography, to a small group of young adults. He also joined the Oregon Camera Club to learn about how photographers talk about their own images and what photography means to them.
White was offered a job in 1938 as a photographer for the Oregon Art Project, funded by the Works Progress Administration. One of his tasks was to photograph the historic buildings in downtown Portland before they were destroyed for the construction of a new river bank. At the same time he made publicity photos for the Portland Civic Theater, documenting their games and taking portraits of actors and actresses.
In 1940, White was hired to teach photography at the La Grande Art Center in eastern Oregon. She quickly became immersed in her work and taught three classes a week, teaching local student arts, reviewing exhibits for local newspapers and delivering weekly radio broadcasts about activities at the Art Center. In his spare time he traveled throughout the region, taking photos of landscapes, farms and small town buildings. He also wrote his first article on photography, "When is Photography Creative?", Published in American Photography magazine two years later.
White resigned from the Art Center in late 1941 and returned to Portland where he intended to start a commercial photography business. That year three of his photographs were received by the Museum of Modern Art in New York to be included in their "Freedom Image" exhibition. At the closing of the museum exhibition bought the three prints, the first time the picture goes into the general collection. The following year, the Portland Art Museum gave its first one-man show, showing off four series of photographs he made in eastern Oregon. He wrote in his journal that with the show "a period is almost over."
In April 1942 White was recruited into the United States Army and hid his homosexuality from the recruiters. Before leaving Portland, he left most of the negative from the historic Portland building with the Oregon Historical Society. White spent the first two years of World War II in Hawaii and in Australia, and later became Head of the Divisional Intelligence Branch in the southern Philippines. During this period he seldom photographed, choosing to write poetry and extend the poem. Three of his longer poems, "Elegies," "Free Verses of Freedom of Speech," and "Little Testament," speak with experience during war and male bonds in extreme conditions. Then he will use some text from "Small Agreement" in the order of his photography Amputation.
After the White war traveled to New York City and enrolled at Columbia University. While in New York he met and became close friends with Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, who worked in the newly created photography department at the Museum of Modern Art. White was offered a job as a photographer for the museum and spent hours talking to and learning from Nancy Newhall, who he said was strongly influenced by his thinking and his direction in photography.
Career mid: 1946-1964
In February 1946, White held his first meeting with several photographers Alfred Stieglitz in New York. White knew of Stieglitz's profound understanding of photography from his various writings, and through their conversations White adopted many of Stieglitz's equality theories, in which the image represents something other than the subject matter, and its use to sort picture images. At one of their meetings, White wrote in his journal that he expressed his doubts that he was ready to become a serious photographer. He writes that Stieglitz asked him, "Have you ever fallen in love?" White replied "yes," and Stieglitz replied, "Then you can take pictures."
During this time, White met and made friends with several major photographers of the time, including Berenice Abbott, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and Harry Callahan. Steichen, who is director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art, offered White Curatorial positions at the museum, but White accepted an offer from Ansel Adams to help him in the newly created photography department at the California School of Fine Arts. (CSFA) in San Francisco. White moved to San Francisco in July and lived in the same house with Adams for several years. While there Adams teaches White about his Zone System methods of exposing and developing negatives, which White is widely used in his own work. He writes much about it, publishes a book and teaches methods of exposure and development as well as practice (pre) -visualisation to his students.
When in San Francisco White became a close friend of Edward Weston in Carmel, and for the rest of his life, Weston had a profound influence on White photography and philosophy. Then he said, "... Stieglitz, Weston and Ansel all gave me what I needed at the time.I took one thing from each: the technique from Ansel, the love of nature from Weston, and from Stieglitz, the assertion that I am still alive and I can take pictures. "Over the next few years White spent a lot of time photographing at Point Lobos, the venue of some of Weston's most famous pictures, approaching many of the same subjects with completely different points of view and creative goals.
By mid 1947 White was a key teacher at CSFA and had developed a three-year course emphasizing personalized expressive photography. Over the next six years he became the teacher of some of the best photographers of the time, including Imogen Cunningham, Lisette Model, and Dorothea Lange. During this time White created the grouping of his first photo and text in a non-narrative form, a sequence he called Amputation . Although scheduled to be featured at the Royal Palace of the Honorary Legion, the exhibition was canceled because White refused to allow the photos to be displayed without text, which included some words that expressed his ambiguity about American postwar patriotism.
The next three years are some of the most productive creative productions. In addition to taking dozens of land and water scenes, he made dozens of photos that grew into some of his most interesting sequences. Three in particular show his continuing struggle with his sexuality. Song Without Words , Temptation St. Anthony Is The Mirror , and The Fifth Sequence/Portrait of a Young Man as an Actor all describes "the emotion of chaos he feels for his love and desire for men."
In 1949 White bought a small Zeiss Ikonta camera and started a series of urban street pictures. Over the next four years, he took almost 6,000 pictures, all inspired by his new interest in Walt Whitman's poetry. The project, which he calls the City of Surf, includes photos of Chinatown San Francisco, the docks, the people on the streets and the various parades and fairs around town.
The period 1951-52 was one of the formative times in White's career. He participated in the Conference on Photography at the Aspen Institute, where ideas for creating new photographic journals were discussed by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, Frederick Sommer and others. As soon as Aperture magazine is founded by many of the same individuals. White volunteered and was approved as an editor, and the problem first appeared in April 1952. Aperture quickly became one of the most influential magazines on photography, and White remained editor until 1975.
By the end of 1952, White's father, who had spent years in exile, died in Long Beach, California. In 1953 Walter Chappell introduced White to I Ching, an ancient Chinese philosophical and divination book, and White continued to be influenced by and referring to this text for the rest of his life. He is particularly interested in the concept of yin and yang, which appear to be opposites or opposing forces can be understood as complementary. Later that same year the reorganization at CSFS resulted in the role of White teaching being reduced, and as a result he began to think about changes in his work. At the same time, Beaumont Newhall recently became a curator at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and Newhall invited White to work with him there as a curatorial assistant. Over the next three years, White held three theme exhibitions that showed his particular interest: "Camera Awareness," "Picture Picture." and "Lyrical and Accurate." In 1955 he joined the faculty at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), where he taught one day a week.
The output of White photography declined during this time due to his teaching and editorial work, but he continued to produce enough pictures that by the end of 1955 he had created a new order, the Cathedral 10/Rural Temple, which included landscape images of sections north of New York recorded in regular film and infrared. In 1955 White was fully involved in teaching, has been appointed as an instructor in a new four-year photography program at RIT as well as conducting classes and workshops at Ohio University and Indiana University. Walter Chappell moved to Rochester at the end of the year to work at George Eastman House. Chappell was involved in lengthy discussions on various Eastern religions and philosophies. White started practicing Zen meditation and adopted the Japanese decorating style in her home. Over the next two years, the discussion between White and Chappell morphed into a long discourse on George Gurdjieff's writing and philosophy. White gradually became a follower of Gurdjieff's teachings and began incorporating Gurdjieff's thoughts into the design and implementation of his workshop. The Gurdjieff concept, for White, is not just an intellectual exercise but a guide to experience, and they greatly influence his many approaches to teaching and photography for the rest of his life.
During the same period White began to create his first color image. Although he is better known for his black-and-white photography, he produces many color photos. The archive contains nearly 9,000 35mm transparencies taken between 1955 and 1975.
In 1959 White put up a huge exhibition of 115 photos of Order 13/Back to Bud at George Eastman House. This is his biggest exhibition to date. Then travel to the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. White was invited to teach 10-day, paid workshops at all costs in Portland to accompany the exhibition. He took advantage of funding to photograph the landscape and conduct natural studies across the country. From his experience in Portland, he developed the idea for a full-time residential workshop in Rochester where students will learn through formal sessions and, after a combination of thoughts from Gurdjieff and from Zen, through the understanding gained by the discipline of those tasks. as housework and morning exercises. He will continue this residential teaching style until he dies. In the early 1960s White also studied hypnosis and incorporated the practice into some of his teachings as a way of helping students experience photographs.
White continues to teach widely both personally and at RIT for the next few years. During this time he traveled across the US in the summer taking photos along the way. In his journal he calls himself during this period as "The Wanderer," which has a literal and metaphorical meaning because of his quest to understand life. In 1962 he met Michael Hoffman, who became a friend, colleague and, later, assumed editor of Aperture magazine. White then named Hoffman became the executor of his will.
Late Career: 1965-1974
In 1965, White was invited to help design a newly formed program in visual arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston. After being appointed Visiting Professor, White moved to the Boston area and purchased a 12-room house in Arlington on the outskirts of the city so he could increase the size of his home workshop for selected students. Immediately after moving to the Boston area, he completed various types of sequences called Slow Dance, which would then be integrated into his teachings. He continues to explore how people understand and interpret photography and begin to incorporate Gestalt psychological techniques into his teachings. To help his students experience the meaning of "equality," he begins to require them to draw a particular subject and photograph them.
White began to experience periodic discomfort in his chest in 1966, and his doctor diagnosed his illness as angina. The symptoms continued for the rest of his life, prompting him to intensify his lessons on spiritual matters and meditation. He turned to astrology in an attempt to improve his understanding of life, and his interest in him became so significant that he required all current students and candidates to complete their horoscopes. At this point in his life, Unorthodox White teaching methods have been well established, and the students who attend his workshops are confused and enlightened by the experience. A student who later became a Zen monk said, "I really want to learn to see how, capture my subject in a way that does not make them lifeless and two dimensional.I do not realize that Minor is teaching us exactly like that: not only to see the picture, but to feel it, to kiss it, to feel it He taught us how to be photography. "
White began writing text for Mirror, Messaging, Manifestation, which was the first monograph of his photographs, at the end of 1966, and three years later the book was published by Aperture. This includes 243 photos and text, including poetry, notes from journals and other posts. Peter Bunnell, who was one of the earliest students of White and then Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, wrote a long White biography for the book. During the same time White completed Sequence 1968 , a series of landscape images of his recent journey. Over the next few years White understood and directed four major themed photography exhibitions at MIT, beginning with "Light 7 " in 1968 and followed by "Be-ing without Clothes" in 1970, "Octave of Prayer "in 1972 and" Celebrations "in 1974. Anyone can submit pictures for the show, and White spends a lot of time personally reviewing all submissions and selecting the final image.
White continues to teach extensively and make his own photographs despite his declining health. He devotes more time to his writing and initiates a long text he calls "Consciousness in Photography and Creative Audience," in which he refers to his 1965 Slow Dance sequence and advances the idea that certain countries of heightened awareness are required to actually read the photos and understand the meaning. To complete this work he submitted a request and received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1970, and Awareness in Photography and Creative Audience became required reading for a new course he taught at MIT called "Creative Audience." in 1971 he traveled to Puerto Rico to explore more of his color photography, and in 1974 and 1975 he traveled to Peru to teach and continue his own Gurdjieff studies.
In 1975 White went to England to teach at the Victoria and Albert Museum and teach classes at various colleges. He continued with a busy travel schedule for several weeks, then flew directly to the University of Arizona in Tucson to take part in the symposium there. When he returned to Boston after nearly six weeks of travel, he suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized for several weeks. After White's focus changed deeper, and he only took a few pictures. He spends most of his time with his student Abe Frajndlich, who makes a series of situational White portraits around his home and in his garden. A few months before his death, White published a brief article in the Parabolic magazine entitled "The Diamond Lens of Fable" in which he associates himself with Gilgamesh, Jason and King Arthur, all the old story heroes of lifelong quest.
On June 24, 1976, White died of a second heart attack while working at his home. He left all his personal archives and papers, along with his large collection of photographs, to Princeton University. He left his home to Aperture so they could continue the work he started there.
Maps Minor White
Equality
White is strongly influenced by the Stieglitz concept of "equality," which White interpreted as allowing photographs to represent more of their subject matter. He writes "when a photo serves as Equals, it also records something in front of the camera and simultaneously spontaneous symbols. (A 'spontaneous symbol' is one that develops automatically to fill the needs of the moment A tree bark photo, for example, may suddenly touch the feelings of appropriate character roughness in a person.) "
In the next life, he often makes photographs of rocks, surfing, wood, and other natural objects that are isolated from the context, thus becoming an abstract form. He wants this to be interpreted by the viewers as something more than what they actually serve. According to White, "When a photographer presents us what for him is the Equivalent, he tells us basically, 'I have feelings about something and this is the metaphor of that feeling.'... What really happens is that he recognizes an object or series of shapes that, when photographed, will produce images with certain suggestive forces that can direct the viewer to a particular feeling, state, or place within himself. "
Dalam pengantar Fourth Sequence (1950), White menulis:
While the rocks are photographed, the subject of the sequence is not rock; while visible symbols appear, they barely point to significance. Meaning comes in the mood they lift in the audience; and the flow of the vortex sequence in the associate stream as it moves from one image to another. The rocks are merely the objects that are the subject of dispersal like sheets in the ground to be dried.
Not everyone agrees or understands White's philosophy. Some abstract images of White "have uncertainties that avoid conventional response." A critic writes, "Without the capacity to see in the rocks some of the essential luster, as Weston did, or in the clouds some clues from the universal life force, as did Stieglitz, one can not understand the images of White.... A person gets the impression that White does not develop as an artist in a linear sense so that it oscillates between the poles of opposites. "
Order
In the mid 1940s White began to articulate his philosophy about the importance of how his photographs were presented to viewers. He was influenced initially by Stieglitz, who in his teaching emphasized that the photographs displayed in the structured content can support each other and can make a more complex and meaningful total statement that the individual images themselves. When White began working as a photographer at the Museum of Modern Art in 1945 he became friends with Nancy Newhall, who organized retrospective photographs of Edward Weston for the museum. Newhall had a knack for creating a very different image grouping, and White later said that Weston's exhibition installations were a revelation to him.
For the rest of his life, he spends a lot of time grouping and rearranging his photographs into a series of particular images that vary in quantities from 10 to more than 100 prints. He describes what he calls the sequence as a "silent cinema" which he feels will provide a "feeling state" created by the photographer and the personality of the individual viewer.
In the early sequence (until 1952) he included various poems and other texts with his drawings. As he develops his thoughts about the sequence, he gradually stops using the text. At the same time many of the drawings are becoming increasingly abstract. Although he is very confident about certain groupings of his drawings, in the initial order he deliberately did not prescribe a specific order for how they should be presented. He says he wants his sequence to be a subjective interpretation, and therefore he wants viewers to gain insight into themselves by allowing them to reflect on his work as they see fit. The concept is limited to the audience that is part of the workshop and its teaching, where they can handle prints individually rather than view them in the gallery.
Later, as he became more interested in anthropology and myth, he began experimenting with how individual images affect audiences through the way they are presented. In a work he calls Totemic Sequence , consisting of 10 photographs, he inserts the same image as both the opening and the closing image. The last image is the first image upside down. White feels that this change illustrates the simultaneous reality and unreality in a photograph. The title he gave for the first image is "Power Spot."
White writes extensively about his thoughts about the sequence, both in his journal and his articles. In his journal he writes, "Photographs in Order or Constellation can be compared to dances or themes.The main points of the whole are expressed and restated with variations until the last member of the audience has found them or them." He also writes "The order now means that the excitement of photographing in sunlight is offset by the joy of editing in the mind's light."
During his lifetime, White made or planned about 100 groups of photographs, including sequences (with multiple versions), series and portfolios. Many are named only "Sequences" followed by numbers, but for some he adds an artistic title that reflects his idea that photographs represent more than obvious subject matter.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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