Saturday, March 21, 2009

Minor White on Equivalence


If you want to be a photographer, you should read this. Several times. It is one of the most powerful short articles on the thought process of making images that 'speak' to others I have ever read.
Minor White on Equivalence:
"When we speak of trends, we concern ourselves with changes, with shifts in style from here to there and back again. Trends are peripheral, yet we can lose ourselves in too blind a concern for them. Central to the changes is something else. If we have to give a name to this centrality, and I guess we do, one name is 'Spirit.' Every fashion, every trend, every style may function as a gateway to the central significance of the aesthetic experience if the individual persists. That is, though we follow trends or get on bandwagons we can always get off and head towards the eternal significance, Spirit. At best styles and trends and fashions are but clothes for the raison d'etre of any art. At the worst, fashions, styles and trends function as traps for the unwary. I will treat here of a tradition, a concept and a discipline, namely the concept or theory called 'Equivalence,' by which any style, fashion or trend may be worked through to something beyond the conformism of competition."

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