Accompanying a major retrospective exhibition opening at The Museum of Modern Art and travelling until 1991, this is a publication of White's work using the artist's extensive personal archive bequeathed to Princeton University on his death.

Controversial, misunderstood, and sometimes overlooked, Minor White (1908–1976) is one of the great photographers of the twentieth century, whose ideas exerted a powerful influence on a generation of photographers and still resonate today. His photographic career began in 1938 in Portland, Oregon, with assignments for the WPA (Works Progress Administration). After serving in World War II and studying art history at Columbia University, White’s focus shifted toward the metaphorical. He began creating images charged with symbolism and a critical aspect called equivalency, referring to the invisible spiritual energy present in a photograph made visible to the viewer. This book brings together White’s key biographical information—his evolution as a photographer, teacher of photography, and editor of Aperture, as well as particularly insightful quotations from his journals, which he kept for more than forty years. The result is an engaging narrative that weaves through the main threads of White’s life, his growth as an artist, as well as his spiritual search and ongoing struggle with his own sexuality and self-doubt. He sought comfort in a variety of religious practices that influenced his continually metamorphosing artistic philosophy. Complemented with a rich selection of more than 160 images including some never published before, the book accompanies the first major exhibition of White’s work since 1989, on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from July 8 to October 19, 2014.

Preface by Peter C. Bunnell. Edited by Nathan Lyons.

Published on the occasion of Aperture magazine's sixtieth anniversary, this is the first anthology of Aperture magazine ever published. This long-awaited volume will provide a selection of the best critical writing from the first twenty-five years of the magazine--the period spanning the tenure of cofounder and editor Minor White. Aperture was established in 1952 by a group of photographers, including Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Barbara Morgan, and historian-curators Beaumont and Nancy Newhall. Their intention was to provide a forum "in which photographers can talk straight to each other, discuss the problems that face photography as profession an art, share their experiences, comment on what goes on, descry the new potentials." With its far-ranging interests in spirituality in diverse forms, and an adventurous commitment to a broad international range, Aperture has had a profound impact on the course of fine-art photography. The texts and visuals in this anthology will be selected by Peter C. Bunnell, White's protégé and an early member of the Aperture staff, who went on to become a major force in photography as an influential writer, curator, and professor. Essay contributors include Andreas Feininger, Henry Holmes Smith, Nathan Lyons, Frederick Sommer, Harry Callahan, Nancy Newhall, John Szarkowski, and other characters essential to the foundation of photography as an art form. Several issues will be reproduced in facsimile, and the book will be enlivened by other distinctive elements, including a selection of exceptional covers, and a selection of the colophons (short statements or quotes) that appeared at the front of each issue.