Minor White Quotes
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Reaching a 'creative' state of mind thru positive action is considered preferable to waiting for 'inspiration'.
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The photographer projects himself into everything he sees, identifying himself with everything in order to know it and to feel it better.
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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.
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Let the subject generate its own photographs. Become a camera.
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If I have anything to give you through camera, it must be of myself. … A gnawing burns inside … to make something of myself worth giving.
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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.
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No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen.
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Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.
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All photographs are self-portraits.
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...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.
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...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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Students were taught by doing.
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One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are.
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We emphasized the creativeness that happens at the moment of seeing over the kind that takes place in the dark room.
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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.
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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.
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The development of a love of medium and a responsibility for one's own pictures is an overall goal.
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To engage a sequence, we keep in mind the photographs on either side of the one in our eye.
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The camera is first a means of self-discovery and a means of self-growth. The artist has one thing to say - himself.
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One does not photograph something simply for 'what it is', but 'for what else it is.
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In putting images together I become active, and excitement is of another order - synthesis overshadows analysis.
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When I look at pictures I have made, I have forgotten what I saw in front of the camera and respond only to what I am seeing in the photographs.
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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.
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I'm always mentally photographing everything as practice.
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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.
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At first glance a photograph can inform us. At second glance it can reach us.
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Photographers who come up with power never get accused of imitating anyone else even though they photograph the same broom, same street, same portraits.
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