White, Minor, 1908-1976

Biography

American photographer, theoretician, critic and educator Minor White was born on July 9, 1908. He took his first photographs on a trip to Lake Superior in Northern Minnesota in 1937. From 1937 to 1938 White worked as an assistant in a photographic studio in Portland, Oregon. In 1938 White photographed historic nineteenth-century façades that were to be demolished in Portland, Oregon. He photographed the Portland commercial waterfront for the Oregon Art Project in 1939. White photographed the landscape of eastern Oregon in 1940. In 1942 White was commissioned by the Portland Art Museum to photograph two historic residences, the Dolph and Lindley houses. White moved to New York City, New York in 1945 and worked as a photographer at the Museum of Modern Art until 1946. That year he moved to San Francisco, California and photographed the work of architect Bernard Maybeck. In 1952 White was a co-founder and editor/director of Aperture magazine in San Francisco, California. In 1953, White moved to Rochester, New York to work for George Eastman House. He worked for GEH until 1956 and lived in Rochester until 1965. White was a founding member of the Society for Photographic Education in 1962. From 1965 to 1974 White taught photography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. In 1968 he photographed in Maine and Vermont, United States and Nova Scotia, Canada. In 1973-1974 White photographed in Lima, Peru and Europe. He died June 24, 1976.

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