Minor White Quotations

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Students were taught by doing.

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.