Workshops with Minor White

[Jayd]

We need White in the digital age

As you say: it was a guess on my part as to why White did not finish his manuscript. I think it tragic that we have and are losing the contributions of a man of such insight and talent. In general the Photographic community seems one of fleeting popular notions seen most recently in the digital revolution that would seem to make all that came before out of date and irrelevant, I did say seem for it is of course an illusion. The basic principles of photography are still the same and have been for about 100 years. The only diffrence is the way an image is recorded and post exposure malniplulated
and of course today's smart cameras. But the vison for an image is never in the camera, and as always the camera is never most important. So we need to learn from men like White, Adams, Hurrell .......... as much today as ever.

Jay

 

[jtk]

I am trying to make contact with Minor White students ... and perhaps people like myself who have been connected with his students. This group/community has influenced something about my photography.

I'm not sure that my contact info will be conveyed through this system due to philosophic conflicts.

 

[sasah zib]

only a footnote:

Laytin, like Frajndlich and many others, went on to study with Minor White as a live-in student at his home, an arrangement that White began in the mid-1950's and continued virtually without interruption until his death in 1976. White's students were, day to day, his closest associates. When he had a stroke at home in 1973, it was a live-in student who saved his life with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, breathing life back into the body that had once breathed it into him. That such a critical moment involved not a friend but a student young enough to be his grandson was no coincidence; it is a fair measure, in fact, of the loneliness and isolation that had him often near despair. [ https://issues.aperture.org/article/1978/1/1/minor-white-rites-passages]

 

[jtk]

only a footnote:

"
Peter Laytin is a photographer and educator based in Massachusetts and professor of Communications Media and head of the photography program at Fitchburg State University. Prior to joining the faculty in 1977, he was assistant professor at the Creative Photography Lab and curator of the Creative Photography Gallery at MIT. He was an apprentice to, and later a colleague of, Minor White.

Peter received his undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his Masters degree in photography, film and video from SUNY-Buffalo. For over 30 years Peter was on the faculty of Cambridge Center for Adult Education where he taught weekend workshops. Peter taught at and was former director of Art New England Summer Workshops at Bennington College in Vermont, and is still involved in its summer operations.

Peter has had numerous one-person exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe. He is the author of the highly acclaimed textbook Creative Camera Control for Focal Press. His photographs have been reproduced in Aperture magazine, as a portfolio in the British Journal of Photography and American Photographer and wrote the chapter on infrared photography in the first textbook on alternative photographic processes Darkroom Dynamics. He has lectured on his work around the world, and has photographs in the corporate holdings of the International Polaroid Collection, Hospital Corporation of America, Willis-Corroon Group, and Putnam Investments to name a few. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA; MIT Collection, Cambridge, MA; Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA; and Fitchburg State University Collection, Fitchburg, MA. "

OK, that's well and good...thanks...however the truth is that I'm much more interested in the way these people live/lived their lives thanks to, and perhaps despite, Minor White... that photography is/was only an aspect of their lives more than it is/was their identity.

 

[jtk]

Vince, I've enjoyed exploring the images on your webpages.

I think the main difference between those images and the ones I photograph (which means "print") is that mine are "found" and even "looked for" (often on a hunch), more than assembled...but often labored over. I genuinely admire what you have assembled.

I've never felt that Ansel's work represented steps on my path, nor have I ever had much interest in "street." In other words, I've been fortunate to find a few important steps on my own path (such as arm's length with Minor White/Gurdjieff ) and discovering Bernd and Hilla Becher as well as certain conceptual artists ) Made good money doing studio work in Ektachrome but remained 35mm mostly...now entirely digital/inkjet.

If I find what might be a step on the path I do wind up making a handful of clicks and exploring some closely related renditions via NIK and Photoshop, and now a soft Pentax sort of HDR, then struggling to realize what I need when printing.

.

​

 

[jtk]

Extended Minor White thread.

Again, I'm hoping to make contact with Minor White's students. And people like me who are aware that they've been indirectly influenced. Maybe a matter of time travel.