Feb 19, 2009 - Sale 2170

Sale 2170 - Lot 100

Price Realized: $ 15,600
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
WHITE, MINOR (1908-1976)
"Moon & Wall Encrustations, Pultneyville, New York." Silver print, 9x12 inches (22.9x30.5 cm.), with White's signature, in pencil, on recto and his initials, in pencil, on the overmat. 1964
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations, cover & 183.
Aperture 80, Rites & Passages, 25.
The Eye that Shapes, 139.
Photography in America, 170.


Minor White earned a degree in Botany in 1933, however his first creative ideas were conveyed in his poetry (although it took him almost 5 years to complete a sequence of 100 sonnets). White later applied this motif to his photographs, sequencing his pictures.


As an emerging photographer, he was often overshadowed by his contemporary Ansel Adams, with whom he developed the Zone System, a way of determining the best film exposure and subsequent development of a negative. Along with various professional appointments, White was a key figure and co-founder of the photographic journal "Aperture." In addition, he was an extremely influential teacher at MIT, where he taught from 1965 until his death. His conceptual ideas regarding photographic expression were visionary, inspiring a new generation of artists to creatively explore the medium.


In his classes White encouraged students to meditate and delve into Zen readings as a precursor to heightened sense of seeing. He mastered the craft of the abstract image and most often saw his images as lines, shapes and textures instead of subject matter. A visual lyricist, his photographs convey a sense of the spiritual and mystical. He believed that what the image consisted of was essential, but the meaning behind it was the most important.


White employed photography as a way to communicate his inner self and was very much intrigued by the idea of "Equivalence," a concept first introduced by Alfred Stieglitz, whereby any image should function not as a thing, but an experience and should serve as a symbol or metaphor for the viewer. Stieglitz "Equivalents" are pictures of everyday natural creations, or mundane items, which are made significant by the way the photograph was taken, predominantly through its use of light, thereby creating a spiritual harmony. It refers to what takes place in a viewers'' minds when they are looking at a photograph causing them to recall something within, or a prior experience, and relating the image to an inner correspondence. The viewers will then take this mental image with them and continue the inner conversation without the photograph being present.


White sought to use specific shapes and forms for their evocative qualities. If the subject of the photograph is ambiguous, the viewer will attempt to invent a certain object or subject to associate with the image; as this invention comes from within, the viewer is then able to relate on some level to the photograph.