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Robert Frank (1924-2019): A Farewell

If Mr. Frank could not escape our awareness of him as the maker of The Americans, he certainly has refused to rest on that laurel, and doggedly resisted our defining him by it. He’s made any attempt to place him on a pedestal or elevate him to a pantheon as difficult as any major artist I know of, past or present. […]

Photography into Sculpture (1970)

The difference between a graphic artist such as Robert Rauschenberg, who incorporates photographic images in his work, and a photographer such as Scott Hyde, who employs silk-screen techniques in producing his final picture, is one that I do not care to define. […]

Time Capsule 1971: Collier’s Encyclopedia Yearbook

Two small items must be appended to this report. First, a Japanese newspaper announced that the waters near Mount Fuji were so polluted that one could develop photographs therein and get recognizable if fuzzy results. And the Allied Impex Corporation, after its success with this item last Christmas, announced that it was again planning to market its Mick-a-Matic — an Instamatic camera built into a large and colorful Mickey Mouse head — during the holiday season. […]

Minor White: “Octave of Prayer” (3)

“Octave of Prayer” represents a man, once a respected and vital teacher and philosopher in photography, coming to believe his own legend and making himself into an institution. This auto-deification is a sad and dangerous turn of events. […]

Minor White: “Octave of Prayer” (2)

In other words, boys and girls, that ain’t Aperture you’re holding, it’s a copy of The Watchtower, intended to make converts willing to follow a man who can simultaneously assert his own “natural talent for camera” and lack of egotism, who can claim, in so many words, that he and his followers are God’s gift to photography. […]