Minor White
American · 1908–1976
American photographer, editor, and teacher whose theory of equivalence — that a photograph can function as a mirror of the viewer's inner state — merged the contemplative traditions of Zen Buddhism with the formal rigor of Stieglitz and Weston, making Aperture magazine the intellectual center of American art photography.
Wikipedia ↗“The state of mind of the photographer while creating is a blank. It is a state of mind that precedes thinking, a state where the familiar becomes strange and the strange becomes familiar. In that blankness, the photograph makes itself — the photographer merely holds the camera steady.”
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“One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are. The photograph of a rock becomes something other than a rock when the viewer brings their own longing to it. This is equivalence: the image as a mirror, not a window.”
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“Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence. Do not photograph until you feel the subject looking back at you — until the distance between seer and seen collapses into a single act of attention.”
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“No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen. The question is never whether there is enough light — the question is whether you are quiet enough inside to receive it.”
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“All photographs are self-portraits. Not because they show the photographer's face, but because they reveal the photographer's way of seeing — which is the deepest portrait of all. When I photograph a frosted window, I am photographing my own capacity for wonder.”
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