Aperture Anthology In-A-Bag

The bluelines for our upcoming Aperture Magazine
 Anthology: The Minor White Years, 1952–1976 have just been delivered to editorial, expertly packaged and fully portable!

This long-awaited volume—published on the occasion of Aperture Magazine’s sixtieth anniversary—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.

The texts and visuals in this anthology were 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. Several documents from Aperture’s founders and individual articles are reproduced in facsimile, and the book is enlivened by other distinctive elements, including a portfolio of each cover, and a selection of epigrams and editorials that appeared at the front of each issue. An extensive index of every contributor to the first twenty-five years of the magazine makes this an indispensible resource. Stay tuned for its Fall 2012 release…

Zen Photography workshop at Apeiron, ca. 1979. Front row, 3rd from left: workshop leader John Daido Loori; 5th from left (hand above eyes): Apeiron founder Peter Schlessinger, who later helped Loori found the Zen Mountain Center in Woodstock, New York. Both were students of Minor White. (Photograph courtesy Apeiron archives)

Forty years ago, shortly after working for a year and a half as an editorial assistant at Aperture (and using many of the contacts he’d made there), Peter Schlessinger opened a photography-workshop center called Apeiron Workshops. Located two hours north of New York City in Millerton, N.Y., and based on methods of focusing attention taught by Aperture’s editor, Minor White, Apeiron offered immersive residential programs of various lengths. Its summer programs offered workshops with an A-list of creative photographers of the time, including Berenice Abbott, Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Paul Caponigro, Linda Connor, Judy Dater, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Ralph Gibson, Emmet Gowin, Robert Heinecken, Elaine Mayes, Lisette Model, Aaron Siskind, Frederick Sommer, and Garry Winogrand, plus Magnum photographers Charles Harbutt, Mary Ellen Mark, Susan Meiselas, Gilles Peress, and Burk Uzzle. Eventually, Apeiron would also run longer (three-month) spring and fall programs, teach in the public schools, offer a selection of traveling exhibitions, run specialized workshops for teachers, and offer theoretical conferences. During its 12-year tenure, Apeiron published Linda Connor’s first book, Solos, and mounted one of the largest NEA-funded photographic surveys, The Long Island Project. Always run on a shoestring and the heroic commitment of its near-volunteer staff, it closed in 1982 as interest rates hit 18 percent and President Reagan slashed the NEA’s funding.

This coming Labor Day weekend, a reunion open to all who ever participated (as staff, students, workshop leaders, artists-in-residence, or special-project staff) is being held at a conference center in the mountains outside Asheville, North Carolina. Anyone who falls into one or more of the aforementioned categories is encouraged to contact Benjamin Porter at apeironreunion@gmail.com or call him at 828-281-1825 for full information.

The winter issue of Aperture magazine (issue 193) features:

• A Magazine in the Making
Peter C. Bunnell revisits the first issue of Aperture on the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the magazine’s founding editor, Minor White.

• Susan Meiselas: Nicaragua
John Berger considers Meiselas’s powerful project on Nicaragua’s civil war in the 1970s.

• The Author As Photographer: Early Soviet Writers and the Camera
Erika Wolf examines authors who tried their hands at photography in the post-revolution Soviet Union.

• Phillip Toledano: Phonesex
Portraits of behind-the-scenes workers who make a living with their voices.

• Richard Misrach: Untitled
A selection from Misrach’s newest body of work, plus a bonus poster included in all subscriber issues!

• Deep in the Archive
An exploration of photography that engages the concept of the archive, by Ulrich Baer.

• Guy Tillim: Things As They Seem
Tillim documents colonial-era architecture and decay throughout Africa.

• On the Edge of Clear Meaning: Reconsidering the Work of John Wood
David Levi Strauss explores how Wood’s photographs and photo-based multimedia works tackle politics with poetry.

• Disappearing Giants
Michael “Nick” Nichols, the veteran wildlife photographer, tracks endangered elephants in Chad and Kenya.

PLUS: Exhibition reviews from London, New York, The Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and Tokyo

Available at newsstands now or subscribe and get the bonus poster from Richard Misrach.

Today marks the 100-year anniversary of Minor White’s birth (1908-1976). White, who co-founded Aperture magazine in 1952 along with seven other visionaries, had an impact on photography that extends far beyond the realm of this foundation. During his lifetime, White was a photographer, critic, poet, writer, editor, and educator. His life and work is extensively detailed by James Baker Hall in Minor White: Rites and Passages, published by Aperture.

When Minor White was a child, his grandfather instilled in him an appreciation and love of photography. White took photography classes in college but, after graduation, he was unable to afford the necessary equipment, so he channeled his creative energy towards poetry. Five years later, White bought a 35mm Argus for $12.50 and headed west with $100 in his pocket to pursue a career in photography. His new career was interrupted by World War II, where he served in the Army Intelligence Corps. Upon his return, White began to rediscover photography and define his relationship to the art. Hall notes, “The rest of White’s life, after his release from the army in 1945, can be seen as one sustained effort, more and more successful as time went on, to find a spiritual home.” It is often said that White found spirituality through photography. This kinship between art and its meaning vastly influenced his work. White also used photography as a way of self-discovery. Without abstracting images, his photographs exemplified his metaphorical concepts.

Minor White strove to take photography beyond the mechanical aesthetic. In the post-war world, photography ran the risk of becoming a resource: a mechanism used solely for documentation. White wanted to revisit photography as an art form and thus engineered a way to explore it that went beyond providing basic information. As editor of Aperture magazine from its creation in 1952 until his death in 1976, he committed himself not only to influencing the way photographers think, but how the audience thinks as well. In a world where anyone can pick up a camera and take a picture one must wonder what makes a photograph art? White used Aperture to boldly distinguish between photojournalism and journalism about photography. Over half a century later, Aperture continues to play with these distinctions. The Summer 2007 issue, for example, portrays Iraq-war veterans in a way that is both provocative and informative. To expound upon the literal and find meaning in photographs is the embodiment of White’s philosophies. White not only had a significant role in the development and creation of Aperture, but he helped to heighten photography to a new level of art form. On his hundredth birthday, it seems only fitting to not just celebrate his life, but also to celebrate his legacy.