Oct 22, 2009 - Sale 2191

Sale 2191 - Lot 229

Price Realized: $ 10,200
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
WHITE, MINOR (1908-1976)
"Frosted Window, Rochester, New York [Beginnings]." Silver print, 9 1/4x7 1/4 inches (23.5x18.4 cm.), with White's signature and date, in pencil, on mount recto. 1962
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Additional Details

From the photographer; to the collection of Jack P. Franks.
Minor White: Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations, 107.
Minor White: Rites & Passages, 13.
Minor White: The Eye that Shapes, 142.



MEMORIES OF MINOR WHITE BY JACK P. FRANKS


In 1957, I was the lucky recipient of the Photographic Society of America's scholarship to the Rochester Institute of Technology. As a sophomore I became a student of Minor White, who had quite a reputation at school given his early interest in Asian philosophy and belief that rocks were alive.

Minor asked me to be his teaching assistant on a summer workshop to the West Coast after Paul Caponigro bowed out. Much has been written about Minor and mysticism, and rightly so. During our trip out west in the summer of 1960, a whole succession of strange, incredible, natural events were at every stop. (Minor called them "memorable coincidences.") After the trip, I lived at Minor's apartment for the entire school year. So I knew him quite well.

Scholars tend to overlook Minor's human qualities. During my senior year at RIT, when he discovered how little money I had, he offered me free room and board. When Minor noticed I was trudging through Rochester's heavy snow in worn out sneakers, he bought me a pair of shoes. He also let me use his Volkswagen bus when I went on a date, and even came to my college graduation and officiated at a tea for my family. He was, in essence, my second father.

Afterwards I went to graduate school in Chicago to study with Aaron Siskind. Subsequently, I became more interested in radio and broadcasting became my lifelong career.

A couple of years before Minor died, I visited him in Arlington, Mass. and confessed that I felt guilty about the years of instruction from him that I had wasted. But then it hit me: he had not been teaching me photography, he had taught me how to live. Minor held me in that big bear hug of his, smiled and said: "I wondered how long it would take you to realize that." That's the Minor I still remember and still love.