Minor White
[Photographer, writer, and theorist, b. 1908, Minneapolis, Minnesota, d. 1976, Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
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.
The camera is first a means of self-discovery and a means of self-growth. The artist has one thing to say—himself.
To see through, not merely with, the eye, to perceive with the inner eye, and by an act of choice to capture the essence of that perception. This is the very core of the creative process.
Let the subject generate its own photographs. Become a camera.
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.
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.
Photographers who come up with power never get accused of imitating anyone else even though they photograph the same broom, same street, same portraits.
When the photograph is the mirror of the man, and the man is the mirror of the world, then the Spirit might take over.
