Minor White was an American photographer born in 1908 and was active as a teacher and photographer during the middle years of the 20th century. His teachings and practice were very mystical and spiritual; steeped in psychology and Zen Buddhism. His photographs were metaphors for an artist’s various emotional and/or metaphysical states. He called these metaphors, inspired by the work of Alfred Stieglitz, equivalents. These metaphors he would collect into sequences of photographs. These sequences were like a “cinema of stills”. Like in cinema where the illusion of movement depends on the phenomenon of the persistence of vision, White liked to say that a lot of the meaning of the sequence lies in the space between the photographs. The space is filled in by the viewer based on their emotional state and unique history and experiences in life.

It is no secret that my work as a photographer has been strongly inspired by the work of Minor White. Another photographer who I have taken inspiration from is Masao Yamamoto (see my previous post). Yamamoto is well known for his practice of creating groupings of photographs directly on gallery walls. They are not sequences but more of a cloud of images related to each other. In my last post I was talking about creating “pieces” from small printed photographs and frames that I find in rummage sales and other places. My next thought on this project was, “Why not create a grouping of my pieces that is more of a “cloud of meaning and metaphors” and not quite a “cinema of stills”.

My first attempt at this is documented in the image above. It is inspired by Minor White whose photographs were, for a large part, metaphors regarding his homosexuality. While I am not gay, I did realize that some of my photographs carry some pattern of sexual frustration and longing. I guess I will just put it out there and see what happens. I would like to point out the obvious in that while this may be my interpretation of this grouping it probably won’t be yours. What you find will be your own.

I leave with this excerpt of Minor White’s writings in Aperture: “Dreams and photographs have something in common, those photographs that yield to contemplation at least have a quality about them that tempt one to set associations going. What you will find will be your own. The experience cannot be compared to addition because that implies one right answer and many wrong ones. Instead the experience should be compared to an equation one factor of which is the viewer’s depth mind. When so treated there are as many right answers as persons that contemplate the picture; and only one wrong answer-no experience.”