Minor White was an American photographer known for his meticulous black-and-white prints of landscapes, architecture, and men. White’s interest in Zen philosophy and mysticism permeated both his subject matter and formal technique. “At first glance a photograph can inform us. At second glance it can reach us,” he once said. Born on July 9, 1908 in Minneapolis, MN, he received his undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota before moving to Portland, OR in 1938. In Oregon, he joined a camera club and later took on photo assignments from the WPA. After serving in the military during World War II, he studied art history under Meyer Schapiro at Columbia University in New York. It was in New York that he met Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams, with whom he formed Aperture magazine. Over the following decades, the artist spent a great deal of his life teaching in academic institutions, including at the burgeoning photography departments of the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and later the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. White died in Boston, MA on June 24, 1976. Today, his photographs are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.