Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This gorgeous collection of White's photographs documents an exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the first major showing of the artist's work since 1991.The book includes several complete series from the exhibition, which demonstrate the breadth of White's artistic concerns and personal passions, alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) erotic, contemplative, and abstractly sculptural. His photographs often evoke a spiritual, otherworldly realm while grounded in the concrete physical manifestations of the everyday world. For example, The Temptation of St. Anthony Is Mirrors, a sequence from the 1940s depicting White's student Tom Murphy, reflects the tenderness and pain of White's closeted homosexuality while referencing Christian martyrdom. White illuminates the sensuous yet transcendent orbs and crystalline filigree in a series shot in upstate New York called The Sound of One Hand.. Martineau's accompanying essay, informative if not groundbreaking, provides a straightforward biography detailing various hardships in White's life and they impacted his art and inspired his teaching career. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
Inspired by contemporaries such as Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston, Minor White (1908-76) became one of the most influential American photographers of the 20th century. White taught photography at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and was the founding editor of the photo magazine -Aperture. This exhibition catalog beautifully reproduces selections of the artist's photographic work in architecture, landscape, and portraiture. The photographs are presented chronologically with generous space given for each image. Martineau's (associate curator, J. Paul Getty Museum) introductory essay is not to be overlooked. It offers a comprehensive narrative of White's life and work, providing depth and understanding to the photographs. An intimate portrait sequence of Tom Murphy, The Temptation of St. Anthony Is Mirrors (1948), by White, a homosexual living in a period of intolerance, is published here in full for the first time. The complete nature series Sound of One Hand (1965) is also included. -VERDICT An important resource that belongs in academic libraries and any public library with a strong art collection. Photographers, historians, and queer-culture scholars will appreciate this catalog.-Shannon Marie Robinson, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
