Property Sold to Benefit THE APERTURE FOUNDATION FOR PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE VISUAL ARTS
Aperture Foundation, a nonprofit organization located in New York City and serving a national and international audience, has been devoted to photography's unique capabilities as a fine art since it was founded 44 years ago. Aperture is known worldwide for its publications, and as a source of meaningful traveling photography exhibitions. Since 1983, Aperture has maintained The Paul Strand Archive and Library, allowing access to qualified students, scholars and photographers. The breadth, quality and relevance of Aperture's programming allow international audiences to explore fine photography as one of the most valuable forms of communication, education, social awareness and artistic endeavor.
Since 1952, Aperture has published a quarterly photography journal with a keen eye towards these goals. Central to Aperture's initial success was its founding editor, the photographer and teacher, Minor White. Together with Ansel Adams, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, Melton Ferris, Dorothea Lange, Ernest Louie, Dody Warren and Barbara Morgan, White established a new forum for the publishing of fine photography.
Minor White's first work in photography came in the late 1930s, when he joined the Oregon Camera Club in Portland and later with several projects for the WPA. Prior to photography, White developed a strong interest in writing and poetry, which continued throughout his life, becoming an integral part of his photographic work.
In 1945, after serving three years in the Army, White traveled to New York, where he enrolled at Columbia University and studied with the art historian, Meyer Schapiro, who helped to further his ideas about philosophy and art. In the following year, White met Berenice Abbott, Harry Callahan, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz had a profound impact on White's development through his use of sequencing images and ideas on equivalence.
In the late 1940s, White began as a teacher at the California School of Fine Arts with Ansel Adams, where he was introduced to Adams' techniques of large format, "straight" photography. In California, White met Edward Weston who, along with Adams and Stieglitz, had the greatest influence on his work. In 1955, he joined the teaching staff of the Rochester Institute of Technology where he remained until 1965. During the 1960s and well into the 1970s, White continued to hold workshops and curate exhibitions, sharing his philosophy of photography and creative expression. White's influence as a teacher grew when he was appointed to a position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965, where in the next several years he helped to build the photography program, much as he had at the California School of Fine Arts. In 1970, the Philadelphia Museum of Art organized a one man show of his work including over 200 images from the 1968 monograph Mirrors Messages Manifestations.
MINOR WHITE (1908-1976)
Details
MINOR WHITE (1908-1976)
Bill LaRue at Carmel Highlands, California
Gelatin silver print. 1959. 7½ x 8 7/8in.
Bill LaRue at Carmel Highlands, California
Gelatin silver print. 1959. 7½ x 8 7/8in.
Literature
Aperture, Rites & Passages, p. 63; Aperture, Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations, p. 148.
Further details
Lots 116-126 may be exempt from sales tax, as set forth in the sales tax notice at the front of this catalogue.