Best 36 quotes of Minor White on MyQuotes

All photographs are self-portraits.

At first glance a photograph can inform us. At second glance it can reach us.

A very receptive state of mind... not unlike a sheet of film itself - seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second's exposure conceives a life in it.

Before he has seen the whole, how unusually perceptive and imaginative the person must be to evolve the entire sequence by meditating on its single, pair or triplet of essential images.

Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.

Camera and eye are together a time machine with which the mind and human being can do the same kind of violence to time and space as dreams.

Different levels of photography require different levels of understanding and skill. A "press the button, let George do the rest" photographer needs little or no technical knowledge of photography. A zone system photographer takes more responsibility. He visualizes before he presses the button, and afterwards calibrates for predictable print values.

If all your life means to you is water running over rocks, then photograph it, but I want to create something that would not have existed without me.

I have often photographed when I am not in tune with nature but the photographs look as if I had been. So I conclude that something in nature says, 'Come and take my photograph.' So I do, regardless of how I feel.

...innocence of eye has a quality of its own. It means to see as a child sees, with freshness and acknowledgment of the wonder; it also means to see as an adult sees who has gone full circle and once again sees as a child - with freshness and an even deeper sense of wonder.

In putting images together I become active, and excitement is of another order - synthesis overshadows analysis.

...insight, vision, moments of revelation. During those rare moments something overtakes the man and he becomes the tool of a greater Force; the servant of, willing or unwilling depending on his degree of awakeness. The photograph, then, is a message more than a mirror, and the mans a messenger who happens to be a photographer.

It is curious that I always want to group things, a series of sonnets, a series of photographs; whatever rationalizations appear, they originate in urges that are rarely satisfied with single images.

No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen.

Often while traveling with a camera we arrive just as the sun slips over the horizon of a moment, too late to expose film, only time enough to expose our hearts.

One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are.

Photographers who come up with power never get accused of imitating anyone else even though they photograph the same broom, same street, same portraits.

Photography is a language more universal than words.

Reaching a 'creative' state of mind thru positive action is considered preferable to waiting for 'inspiration'.

Some of the young photographers today enter photography where I leave off. My "grandchildren" astound me. What I worked for they seem to be born with. So I wonder where Their affirmations of Spirit will lead. My wish for them is that their unfolding proceeds to fullness of Spirit, however astonishing or anguished their lives.

Sometimes we work so fast that we don't really understand what's going on in front of the camera. We just kind of sense that, 'Oh my God, it's significant!' and photograph impulsively while trying to get the exposure right. Exposure occupies my mind while intuition frames the images.

Students were taught by doing.

The camera is first a means of self-discovery and a means of self-growth. The artist has one thing to say - himself.

The development of a love of medium and a responsibility for one's own pictures is an overall goal.

The photographer projects himself into everything he sees, identifying himself with everything in order to know it and to feel it better.

The reason why we want to remember an image varies: because we simply 'love it,' or dislike it so intensely that it becomes compulsive, or because it has made us realize something about ourselves, or has brought about some slight change in us. Perhaps the reader can recall some image, after the seeing of which he has never been quite the same.

There's no particular class of photograph that I think is any better than any other class. I'm always and forever looking for the image that has spirit! I don't give a damn how it got made.

The state of mind of the photographer creating is a blank. I might add that this condition exists only at special times, namely when looking for pictures. -Something keeps him from falling off curbs, down open manholes, into bumpers of skidding trucks while in this condition but goes off duty at other times. . . . This is a very special kind of blank. A very active state of mind really, it is a very receptive state. . .

To engage a sequence, we keep in mind the photographs on either side of the one in our eye.

Watching the way the current moves a blade of grass - sometimes I've seen that happen and it has just turned me inside out.

We could teach photography as a way to make a living, and best of all, somehow to get students to experience for themselves photography as a way of life.

We emphasized the creativeness that happens at the moment of seeing over the kind that takes place in the dark room.

When I looked at things for what they are I was fool enough to persist in my folly and found that each photograph was a mirror of my Self.

When you approach something to photograph it, first be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence. Then don't leave until you have captured its essence.

While we cannot describe its appearance (the equivalent), we can define its function. When a photograph functions as an Equivalent we can say that at that moment, and for that person the photograph acts as a symbol or plays the role of a metaphor for something that is beyond the subject photographed.

To get from the tangible to the intangible (which mature artists in any medium claim as part of their task) a paradox of some kind has frequently been helpful. For the photographer to free himself of the tyranny of the visual facts upon which he is utterly dependent, a paradox is the only possible tool. And the talisman paradox for unique photography is to work "the mirror with a memory" as if it were a mirage, and the camera is a metamorphosing machine, and the photograph as if it were a metaphor…. Once freed of the tyranny of surfaces and textures, substance and form [the photographer] can use the same to pursue poetic truth" (Minor White, Newhall, 281).