Institute of Art Design and Technology, Dun Laoghaire

School of Creative Arts

Sequential Equivalence
Alfred Stieglitz, Minor White
Reality, Abstraction, Transmission
By

Brian David Brady

Submitted to School of Creative Arts in candidacy for the Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree
in Photography, 2010
This dissertation is submitted by the undersigned to the Institute of Art Design & Technology,
Dun Laoghaire in partial fulfilment of the examination for the BA (Hons) Photography. It is
entirely the author’s own work except where noted and has not been submitted for an award
from this or any other educational institution.

Signed______________
 Abstract

This dissertation will discuss the dichotomy that Alfred Stieglitz embodied in the
theory of Equivalence, what this theory brought to photographic art. The theory though
always of relatively minor interest to photographers has in the words of Minor White become
a perennial trend that generationally reappears. Photographs that fall under the Equivalent
name have always been seen as abstraction that depicts the artist intent rather than the
representation of the world. By their very nature equivalents made in the straight or pure
photographic tradition are not abstracts as they are indeed sharply focus selections of reality,
using the photographic techniques of the f64 club, who tried to show the world as hyper real?
This is at odds with the idea of abstraction, were reality is left firmly behind as the artists
journeys into non representational expression far removed from people, places and the 10,000
things of this material world. This asks the question is a photographic equivalent an abstract
or a selective portrayal of the world and does it have the power to communicate metaphysical
ideas.
 Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr Anne Burke for her unflappable patience

and her invaluable assistance and meticulous attention to detail, I
would also like to thank Dr John Plutz and Dr Andrew E.
Hershberger for their inestimable contributions and help in
obtaining their original research material in this field
 List of Photographs

Chapter One
Fig 1 "The Terminal” Alfred Stieglitz 1893 page 5
Fig 2 “The Flat-Iron Building” Alfred Stieglitz 1902/3 page 7
Fig 3 “Equivalent' gelatine silver print” Alfred Stieglitz 1931 page 9

Chapter Two
Fig 4 “Battery Street”, San Francisco, Minor White, 1952
Fig 5 “San Francisco”, Minor White, c1950

Chapter Three
“Sound of one hand clapping” Minor White, Sequence 1965

1 “Metal Ornament,” Pultneyville, New York, October 10, 1957

2 “Burned Mirror”, Rochester, New York, June, 1959

3 “Windowsill Daydreaming”, Rochester, New York, July, 1958

4 “Galaxy, Rochester”, New York, January 12, 1959

5 “Empty Head”, Rochester, New York, February, 1962

6 “Dumb Face, Frost on Window”, January 12, 1959

7 “Frost Wave”, Rochester, New York, January 17, 1959

8 “Christmas Ornament”, Batavia, New York, January, 1958

9 “Ritual Branch, Frost on Window”, December 8, 1958

10 “Icicle in Light”, Rochester, New York, January 17 1959

Conclusion
Fig 6 “Iceland”, John Paul Caponigro, 2009
 Table of contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page iv

Chapter One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 1

Chapter Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 10

Chapter Three . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 42

Appendix One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 46

Appendix Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 48

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 49
 Introduction

The use of photography to create art has always been filled with controversy, the
debate, does the mechanical process that photography relies on exclude it from the fine arts.
At the root of this argument is the reproduction of reality by a machine versus the expressive
nature of art painting/sculpture using imagination and human skill. As for the art of music it
is usually safer for the critics of photography to ignore the fact that most no vocal music is
made with mechanical instruments,

The Thesis will show how Alfred Stieglitz the originator of the Equivalent, has left us
with many questions about his theories, even though Stieglitz has written many hundreds of
thousands of words about photography, many of which we will see are in the form of
justification as to why his photography is art. Yet few to really explain how his theory
worked and fewer still s to how the equivalent actually functions

It will be shown that his successor examined, explored and expound on Equivalence
and as importantly the use of photographs in sequence. Minor White’s work is well known
for its beauty and the perfection of photographic technique, he has an equal reputation as an
educator, theorist, mentor and the editor of the renowned publication, Aperture. Stieglitz
passed the flame of equivalence to Minor White around 1946 which White religiously
pursued it till his demise. It is by putting White’s work under scrutiny that the answers to
these many questions will be found

This thesis will examine how a photograph of a person, place or thing, firstly can be
seen as an abstract and if we agree that it can be an abstract, how can that abstract transmit
the inner most thoughts feeling and ideas of the artist who makes it? We will look at the
various elements that come are in operation when we view an Equivalent. The purpose of the
abstract, the new behaviours a group of photographs acquire once placed in series. While
examining how the audience itself becomes part of the communication process, making an
Equivalent very different from other forms of photography.

Discovering the different ways in which the properties of an equivalent operate as

pictorial sign posts to the artist’s inner psyche. How as an art form the equivalent has the
ability to express the most complex and sensitive ideas without compromise or limitations
imposed by the nature of photography.
 Chapter One

Head in the Clouds

 Alfred Stieglitz
January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946
Equivalence, a theory that would allow photography to take an equal place amongst the
other fine arts. A theory that is part poetic allegory, part sophisticated Rorschach test and part
Jungian Archetype, where an image loses the meaning agreed by convention. So a close up
black and white photograph of ice, water and rocks, is just the raw material for the artists
exploration of intended meaning. When Alfred Stieglitz declared that he was making music
with his cloud photographs, he was attempting to instil in the viewer the feelings he had when
listening to music, in this case the music of Bloch. But are we to believe Stieglitz, when he
tells us the series of photographs of clouds are Equivalents for music and also what part does
the sequence play in this metaphysical operation. How then did Stieglitz create this theory that
uses realism as abstraction! How has it developed since its inception?

"I was born in Hoboken. I am an American. Photography is my passion.

The search for Truth my obsession."

"PLEASE NOTE: In the above STATEMENT the following, fast becoming

"obsolete", terms do not appear: ART, SCIENCE, BEAUTY, RELIGION, every
ISM, ABSTRACTION, FORM, PLASTICITY, OBJECTIVITY,
SUBJECTIVITY, OLD MASTERS, MODERN ART, PSYCHOANALYSIS,
AESTHETICS, PICTORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY, DEMOCRACY, CEZANNE,
"291", PROHIBITION. The term TRUTH did creep in but it may be kicked out
by anyone." 1

Alfred Stieglitz’s lifelong artistic journey was one that travels many winding avenues;
from his gallery curatorships to the editorship of many periodicals both of the tradition arts
i.e. “291” to his better know photographic journals “Camera Notes” and “Camera Work.”
These activities placed Stieglitz in a privileged position, a position he used not only to
“educate the American public”2 to the new developments in European art, but to establish the
Stieglitz legend as an art connoisseur, a position he would guard at all costs. Throughout his
career he would continue to be influenced by developments in European modern art. As he
had studied in Europe and returned many times to Europe throughout his life in search of art
work and artistic ideas for his photography and his galleries. He continually looked to the
“Old World” as means to educate the New World. By the later period of his life he come to
believe that American art had reached a level where it stood side by side with European art
and would refuse to show anything other than work that had its origins in the new world.
1 Dorothy Norman (1973). Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer. NY: Random House. p. 142,
225
2 Jerry Cargill. Stieglitz's 291: An American, Avant-Garde Magazine. Copyright 1994,
2008, Written at Columbia
College Chicago, 1994.

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 As an artist it was photography that Alfred Stieglitz chose amongst all the arts as a
means to express himself. It is important to see how his photography developed slowly from
the painterly expressionism of the Photo-Secession though a kind of technical precise
photographic super realism, and eventually he settled into the work he would come to call
Equivalence. In all phases of this development he formed a group of disciple like
photographers orbiting his genius star.

To understand Stieglitz’s approach to photography, We must understand one of the

most important motivations that ran through his life’s work was to have photography
respected and accepted equally amongst the traditional arts. Although he has contradicted
himself many times in both print and anecdote this is indeed his greatest achievements as time
has told, he is accepted as the father of at least American art photography.

Stieglitz originally a fervent disciple of the Pictorialist movement in photography had

championed many European and American photographers with his little gallery of the Photo-
Secession and in his publication Camera Notes. His photographic work of the late 1800’s
pictorial in intent if not exactly in its execution.

He championed pictorial photography it seems as a knee jerk reaction to the

introduction of the Kodak #1 camera and the army of point-and-shoot amateurs that began to
roam America. Continuing his quest to have photography named an art, he was drawn into the
weird and wonderful world of the manipulated photographic image. The refinement of
esoteric and arcane processes that would transmute the photograph into work of art, even if
these photographs added nothing to the evolution of art as they heavily mimicked painting.
The techniques of carbon and gum printing, negative retouching and defacing and the hand
tinting and toning of prints became central to the pictorial craftsperson. The photo-secession
(1902-1915) an invitation only group formed by Alfred Stieglitz as means of gaining full
curatorship powers over exhibitions of pictorial photography. With this in place he was able
to challenge the exhibition/contest art establishment with boycott and abstention. “Stieglitz
and his American colleagues quickly picked up on the strategy of boycott as a means of
demanding jury members deemed qualified to judge art photography.3” Stieglitz had set
himself up as the Piped Piper of art photograph placing himself as the central figure of the

3 Paul Spencer Strenberger (1966). Between Amateur & Aesthete. University of New
Mexico Press. P132 para 3

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American pictorial movement; the fact that there was little to “Secession” from has escaped
many who cite Stieglitz as a pioneer, as there was no other known photographic art movement
in America to actually leave. Stieglitz often corresponded with the painter and writer Fritz
Matthies-Masurian (1873-1938)4 who was intimately involved with the Munich Secession of
1892, it can easily be seen that this is where the photo-secessions name came from. If it was
an homage Stieglitz never let it be known, it had succeeded in promoting the Little Gallery of
the photo-secession and of course made Stieglitz synonymous with Art Photography in
America.

Fig 1 "The Terminal" Alfred Stieglitz 1893

The Terminal (Fig 1) is one of Stieglitz most famous Pictorial works even though it is a
straight un-manipulated photogravure print. Because of the soft focus mostly due to
handholding the camera in low light and the steam raising from the horses, the photograph fits

4 Weston Naef (1978). The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz: Fifty Pioneers of Modern
Photography. NY:
Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 63.

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perfectly between the painterly visions of the Pictorialists of the day and forms a bridge from
the painterly photography to what would eventually be called by the critic Sadakichi
Hartmann "straight photography." 5 Yet it is doubtful that Stieglitz understood he had made
such a ground breaking photograph, similarly with “Steerage” the photograph which is
probably his most well known and discussed. Because of the length of time between making
the negative and final publication, nearly four years, we can surmise that he did not indeed
know that it was the masterpiece it has now become known as. He had freed his camera from
its tripod and given himself free reign in the city that would give birth to the most modern of
buildings. Stieglitz use of 20/20 hindsight in his writing show when we look at another of his
photographs,

The Flat-Iron building (Fig 2) was photographed in the winter of 1902/3. This photograph
though made ten years after the terminal fits more comfortably into the Pictorialist oeuvre.
Here again he seems to be unaware that he has moved into photographing form for romantic
effect, to making a representational photograph of the then new building. Again with
hindsight he wrote in 1920

he had wanted to document...the New York of transition,-The Old gradually

passing into the New.......the Spirit of that something that endures New York to
one who really loves it.- not for its outer attractions- but for its deepest worth- &
significance.- The universal thing of it.6

It seems that anything that Stieglitz photographs or writes may be moulded into the
theory he is expounding at that particular time. By the mid twenties he had reached the
alternative position in his own photography. These photographs were not documents, but
catalysts in the artistic transmission of emotional or spiritual entities. What brought about this
extraordinary change in his photographic approach, and what legacy has it left to abstraction
in photography? If we examine the photographs that the artist has called equivalents we can
see that there are a number of problems with the theory.

5 Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/stgp/ho_58.577.11.htm
02/11/09
6 Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz on Photography, Aperture Foundation, Inc; Notes by Richard
Whelan page 116 para 5

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Fig 2. The Flat-Iron Building Alfred Stieglitz 1902/3

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 It can clearly be seen that Stieglitz’s equivalents are not abstracts but are realist in their
intent and purely photographic in their execution. Recognizable photographs of clouds in
focus can hardly be called abstract, so what was Stieglitz after. ”My aim is increasingly to
make my photographs look so much like photographs that unless one has eyes and sees, they
won’t be seen- and still everyone will never forget them having once looked at them. I wonder
if that is clear.7”

So when it comes to his work with equivalents how are we to take what he tells us
seriously. Nancy Newhall originally questioned the power of Equivalence as “mostly
Humbug, and Stieglitz at his romantic worst.”8 We need to look at his ground breaking
photographic milestones and his achievements in art appreciation, to give us the
understanding of his character and the influence this had on his theories. We need to decide if
he really had discovered a way to use photography to convey humanity’s deepest and most
important precepts and ideas through the subliminal channels of the subconscious. Or did he
pick clouds to photograph as a convenient way into the field of abstraction. Ever changing
they have some similarities to water and smoke and with an active imagination one can read
anything one wants into the formations that have been randomly made and captured.

This is a true, quite complete, form of abstract expression, except of course that
such a term implies an important contribution from the spontaneous, gesturing
hand of the artist, which in this case we have not got. The Gesture belongs to the
clouds, it would appear, which are forever changing themselves; God in some
form or other, And “abstract” must be a misnomer, since these are real clouds;9

Just as Edward Weston had searched the rock formations of Point Lobos seeking to find
abstractions within reality “It is unfortunate, to say the least, that the tremendous capacity
photography has for revealing new things in new ways should be overlooked or ignored by
the majority of its exponents—but such is the case”10 Weston as with many photographers of
his age seem to bemoan the introduction of mass photography. Where the serious
photographers were looking for meaning
7 Stieglitz (19). "How I came to Photograph Clouds". Amateur Photographer and
Photography: p 256
8 Nancy Newhall, From Adams to Stieglitz: Pioneers of Modern photography. NY
Aperture, 1989 p107
9 Jay Bochner, An American Lens.MIT Press 2005 P259 para 2
10 Edward Weston Photography – Not Pictorial, Camera Craft. Vol, 37 No. 7, pp. 313-20,
1930

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 It seems Stieglitz was making thes same explortion looking on the Firmament for a
reflection of his inner most engagement with music.

Fig3.’Equivalent' gelatine silver print Alfred Stieglitz 1931

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 Attempting to recapture the excitement which accompanies the birth of a new idea will
of course be diluted by the passage of time and coloured by the contempt born of familiarity.
Is equivalence a metaphor, symbolism or the use of archetypes to transmit ideas and emotions
at a subliminal level? Trying to decipher, explain and expound on the theory of equivalence,
we are entering the minefield of Stieglitz unreliable timeline of thought, this complicated by
the esoteric and mystical explanations of his theoretical disciple Minor White, can leave us
confused as to how equivalence originated and how it has developed in its various guises, and
finally where if at all it stands today. Minor White the most influential disciple of
Equivalence tells us it is. “Probably the most mature idea ever presented to picture-making
photography was the concept of Equivalence which Alfred Stieglitz named early in the 1920's
and practiced [sic] the rest of his life”. 11 Equivalence, as a concept was formulated by Alfred
Stieglitz nearly a hundred years ago, in 1922 Stieglitz started his experiments with this new
concept. Spurred on by a young writer, who presented him with an insight into how a
photograph may affect the viewer. “one of America's young literary lights believed the secret
power in my photography was due to the power of hypnotism I had over the sitter”12 The term
hypnotism intrigued Stieglitz, was it the photography, the printing or the subject matter that
was creating this effect on the viewer. Stieglitz had for most of his life worked to have
photography recognised as a medium that could transmit more then what the photograph
depicted. It was his belief that photography had a power equal to or greater than any of the
other tradition artistic mediums that finally brought him to the notion of Equivalence. “My
photographs are a picture of the chaos in the world, and of my relationship to that chaos. My
prints show the world's constant upsetting of man's equilibrium and his eternal battle to
reestablish it” [sic] 13

When the technology of panchromatic film finally matured, it became available

commercially in 190614, this new film allowed blue to be rendered as a shade of grey. Stieglitz
was at last given the means to make photographs of clouds, something that he had attempted

11 Minor White, Equivalence: The Perennial Trend, PSA Journal, 1963, Vol. 29, No. 7, pp.
17, para 2
12 Dorothy Norman, An American Seer. Aperture Foundation Inc, 1960, chapter 11 pp
131 para 1
13 Dorothy Norman, ibid chapter 11 pp 135 para 2
14 Ralph E. Jacobson et al., The Manual of Photography: Photographic and Digital
Imaging, 9th ed., Focal Press,
p. 208

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from time to time throughout his career he felt at last that he had found the means to free
photography from the obvious, trite and recognizable. For the first time in the relatively short
history of photography he felt he was able to make pictures free from form and content
releasing himself from the confines of representation and moving photography into the
modern era of abstraction. But had he?

I wanted to photograph clouds to find out what I had learned in forty years about
photography. Through clouds to put down my philosophy of life – to show that
(the success of) my photographs (was) not due to subject matter – not to special
trees or faces, or interiors, to special privileges – clouds were there for
everyone…15

He wanted to make photographs that would make the composer Bloch exclaim they are
music. So he photographed clouds, as a subject a cloud can be seen in a modernist sense as an
ever changing form. But this could be just a symbol for music; Stieglitz declares that he
wanted to evoke an allegoric feeling and not just a mental association. For a more effective
description of the theory of equivalence we must turn to Stieglitz spiritual heir, Minor White

When the photographer shows us what he considers to be an Equivalent, he is

showing us an expression of a feeling, but this feeling is not the feeling he had for
the object that he photographed. What really happened is that he recognized an
object or series of forms that, when photographed, would yield an image with
specific suggestive powers that can direct the viewer into a specific and known
feeling, state or place within himself. With constantly metamorphizing material
such as water, or clouds or ice.16

Though Minor White has written widely although mostly unpublished, on Equivalence
Stieglitz left hardly anything for us, it is as if he had not fully formulated his theory and had
just glimpsed the potential of this intriguing form of photography.

15 Alfred Stieglitz (19). "How I came to Photograph Clouds". Amateur Photographer and
Photography: p 255
16 Minor White, Equivalence: The Perennial Trend, PSA Journal, 1963, Vol. 29, No. 7, pp.
17, para 8

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 Chapter Two

Clearing the Mist

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 Minor White
July 9, 1908 – June 24, 1976

How to find how a realistic photograph of a carefully selected section of the natural
world can be considered an abstract work of art, to do this we must autopsy the theory of
equivalence. “Probably the most mature idea ever presented to picture-making photography
was the concept of Equivalence which Alfred Stieglitz named early in the 1920's and
17
practiced [sic] the rest of his life.” Minor White was without doubt the champion of the
equivalent, and it is to his many writings that we will turn. From his first exposure to the
equivalence, given to him directly from Alfred Stieglitz himself in 1946, to his death Minor
White explored practiced and taught equivalence as his main theory of photography. He also
sought in the founding of Aperture magazine a tool not only to promote the fine art of
photography, but to spread the gospel of equivalence.

Minor White became its editor, a job he took with him everywhere he went,
without pay for the next twenty years. Conceived and executed around several
themes - Stieglitz idea of the Equivalent; “reading” photographs carefully and
analytically (according to the principles of the New Criticism in poetry); the need
for a sophisticated literature in the field.18

Though we will touch on other photographers work it is in White that we find the
equivalents true missionary.

“Exploring the depth and breadth of the words Equivalent and Equivalence I
have found a craftsmanship of feeling, a technique, an art, a psychology of
feeling, and best of all, freedom from the tyranny of ecstasy.”

Monhegan Island 1966

17 Minor White, Equivalence: The Perennial Trend, PSA Journal, 1963, Vol. 29, No. 7, pp.
17, para 2
18 James Baker Hall, Minor White RITES & PASSAGES, Aperture, Inc 1978 page 88 para 3

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Fig 4 “Battery Street”, San Francisco Minor White, 1952

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 For a definition of equivalence we will turn to Whites famous essay “Equivalence: The
Perennial Trend” originally published in the PSA (Photographic Society of America) Journal
in 1966, this is Whites essay to bring equivalence to the people, in the essay and he breaks the
theory into three simple levels.

Level one: The graphic level, the foundation for our viewing experience. There is no
particular style or set of representational standards that give us an Equivalent. But if the
viewer finds a reflection of a feeling, emotional response, memory or an experience recalled
or triggered by the photograph’s formal and stylistic content then the photograph has at a
basic level worked as an Equivalent.

Level Two: Here we have an interaction between the photographer's intent and the
viewer's psychological and emotional response. When a photograph works as an Equivalent it
is at the same time a documentary record (Level One) and a symbol for the metaphoric
content of the photographer’s intent and a mirror to the viewers reflected experience.

Level Three: What one remembers from the encounter that took place with the
photograph and the emotional response it stimulated? How this is coloured by our own
personal sympathies and prejudices. We may remember the experience with the Equivalent
and distort it with hindsight to produce an encounter removed further from the photograph
but close again still to the feel.

When a photographer presents us with what to him is an Equivalent, he is

telling us in effect, "I had a feeling about something and here is my metaphor
of that feeling." The significant difference here is that what he had a feeling
about was not for the subject he photographed, but for something else.19

With these loose guide lines we can immediately see that there are large grey areas
between each of the levels and that they can operate independently or in combination with
each other. There is also no way to plainly explain what should be present in an image to
make it a functioning Equivalent. The interpretation of the theory by various photographic
artists will be looked at later. We now have a loose frame work with which to explore
equivalence.

19 Minor White, Equivalence: The Perennial Trend, PSA Journal, 1963, Vol. 29, No. 7, pp.
18, para 4

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 We also must examine what White meant in his particular use of the words objective,
subjective, reality, abstraction, photographically, truth. Also how he put these ideas into the
photographic sequence.

For White truth meant spiritual rather than documentary truth from his Baptism in 1943
while in the pacific theatre of the Second World War to his joining the Gurdjieff group in
Rochester circa 1956. White had sought only an inner truth and this is made plain that it is
not in any way a documentary truth or photographic truth if there be such a thing.

The photographers who look at the photograph as a source of experience take the
camera as something that neither tells the truth nor tells a lie – and take it
seriously. While they recognise and often use the photograph as a “bridge,” they
consider the bridge as one without a far shore its last span leaping into space. In
fact they consider that the fact of a discontinuity between original “object” and
print “subject” squares better with the real relation between photographs and the
world of appearances.20

Reality and abstraction are the real crux of our investigation so we will examine how
reality and abstraction function for the equivalent maker. Weston as one of the founding
fathers of so called pure straight photography, by straight photography we can use the f64
groups manifesto’s guide to what is a pure photograph. “Pure photography is defined as
possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form.” 21
They say that the pure photograph is one made using only those inherently photographic
means.

Photography is too honest a medium, direct and uncompromising, to allow of

subterfuge. One notes in a flash a posed gesture or assumed expression in
portraiture—or in landscape, a clear day made into a foggy one by use of a
diffused lens, or an underexposed sunset labelled (sic) "Moonlight"!22

The camera is to be used to record all areas of the plane in sharp focus. The film can be
exposed and developed to record shadow and highlight detail necessary for the photographer
to achieve their desired Print, the resulting negative is not to be manipulated in anyway. The
final print may only be manipulated by exposure and development and toning is restricted to
archival necessity. Though this may sound like an artistic straight jacket, it is under these
conditions that Weston Adams and White produced their most recognised work.
20 Minor White, Chapter XV “The Photographer’s Approach to ‘Source,’” in “The
fundamentals of
Photography” unpublished book
21 Group f/64 Manifesto, http://kcbx.net/~mhd/1intro/f64.htm 01/02/2010
22 Edward Weston, ibid

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 So the camera for me is best in close up, taking advantage of this lens power:
recording with its one searching eye the very quintessence of the thing itself rather
than a mood of that thing—for instance, the object transformed for the moment by
charming, unusual, even theatrical, but always transitory light effects. Instead, the
physical quality of things can be rendered with utmost exactness: stone is hard,
bark is rough, flesh is alive, or they can be made harder, rougher, or more alive if
desired. In a word, let us have photographic beauty!23

This is the photographic reality that is central to the question, can the camera produce
abstract art and consequentially the metaphor needed to make an Equivalent. These
sentiments are echoed by the entire f64 Group, many of whom, Imogen Cunningham, Walter
Chappell and Ansel Adams taught alongside White at the Californian School of fine Arts,
now the San Francisco School of Arts. Fellow teacher Dorothea Lange also declared herself
an advocate of realism and along with the others had grave suspicions about abstractionism in
photography. The realism that we are discussing is the photographic realism that our own
eyes with their limit circle of sharp definition can never experience outside of viewing a
straight photography.

Yet all of these photographers have made abstract photographs. Much to the
abstractionist painters chagrin even Clement Greenberg of the CSFA own painting
department was on the offensive.

Greenberg’s review, ”The Camera’s Glass Eye,” published in The Nation in

March, (1946) attacked Weston and other photographers for their encroachment
into the territory of painting. Abstraction especially was sacred ground that
Greenberg did not want painting to accede. Weston responded:24 “The painters
have no copyright on modern art!”25

To which White answered with an article of his own, exploring the photographer
behind the camera’s glass eye, it seems quite odd, that the mechanical/technological nature of
the camera keeps rearing its head to each new generation of painters.

23 Edward Weston,” Photography—Not Pictorial” Camera Craft, Vol. 37, No. 7, 1930, pp.
313-20 para 5
24 Andrew E Hershberger, THE “Spring Tight-Line” IN MINOR WHITE’S THEORY OF
SEQUENTIAL
PHOTOGRAPHY, Analecta Husserliana LXXXVIII p185-215, Springer 2005
25 Nancy Newhall as quoted “Controversy and the Creative Concepts,” Aperture 2,2 July
1952 page 12

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Plate 5 “San Francisco” Minor White, c1950

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 Where the true step to abstraction in photography comes is with its association with the
spiritual intentions of the photographer. This evolved from the pre war transcendence of
meaning not to be confused with the sixties transcendentalism. Where the artist is seeking to
transcend the shell of the mundane surface, to explore and reveal the inner essence of his
subject, to bring us into contact with its meaning.

By the time of The Sense of Abstraction, (The Sense of Abstraction in

Contemporary Photography. Exhibition MOMA N.Y. 1960) two generation of
American photographers had developed an absolute tenet of faith that the meaning
of a photograph was located in the photographers consciousness, not in the image
per se,--From Alfred Stieglitz’s Equivalents of the 1920’s—cloud studies were
supposed to correspond to inner psychological states – to Weston’s image of a
chambered Nautilus, isolated on a pure black background, to Minor White’s
sequences.26

White had found his answer in Edward Weston’s own deeply Buddhist inspired words.
“This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.”27 Weston
along with Ansel Adams of the f64 Group had always advocated the exploration of nature,
Weston in close up and Adams with monumental landscapes. “Such subjects were consistent
with their deepest principles, for Weston and Adams believed that the artist should remain
beyond the turmoil and confusion of current events, thus stability and solidity became the
leitmotifs...”28

This search for meaning on an inner level expressed by photography would engage
White till the end of his days and we can see how both his spiritual and artistic searches begin
to merge into one unifying life quest. This search for a means to bring esoteric levels of
meaning to his art had led him away from poetry to photography in the first place. He had
proved to himself with the 100 sonnet cycle that poetry could not suitably conceal his
bisexual tendencies with the level of discretion 1930 America required. Equivalence with its

26 Lyle Rexer, The Edge of Vision, The Rise of Abstraction in Photography Chapter 4
page100 para 2
27 Edward Weston, The Day Books of Edward Weston, vol. 2, page 154.Entry date 24
April 1930
28 David P. Peeler, The Art of Disengagement: Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. Journal
of American Studies,
Vol. 27, No. 3, American Art and Music. Cambridge University Press (Dec., 1993), pp.
309

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reliance on metaphor must have seemed like the perfect answer to his initial problem of
communicating meaning.

The success of the photographic equivalence and poetic symbolism depends on

the realization that the phenomena of nature can be restructured according to the
demands of the imagination, that sensory data can be ripped out of the world and
repositioned in another context, where they take on new significances.29

But were Minor White really takes a step further is with his use of sequences to further
expound and refine his ideas.

Even though Stieglitz put together several sequences from his cloud equivalents,
it was White who made sequencing work. By ordering photographs to articulate
the symbolic meaning of the images, he created sequences that successfully
function as single equivalents. The images might be drawn from a single period of
his work or from over a wide range of time. Making the photograph was not the
final act of creation for White; rather, the creative process centred on
experimenting with sequences, arranging and rearranging photographs to find the
juxtapositions that would evoke the equivalence of his feeling.30

The sequence, or as Minor White preferred a “Cinema of Stills”31 was a device used by
Stieglitz with his first equivalent cloud photographs “Music”. Where a single photograph
may leave almost too much to the imagination then the sequence can either help clarify or
further compound meaning. Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, the Soviet film pioneer’s
theories on editing have a close affinity to White’s “Cinema of Stills”. Eisenstein’s theory of
Intellectual Montage is hinted at here with the reference to a sequence of images that are not
naturally associated with each other, but together create a third meaning.

In his film "Strike", Eisenstein includes a sequence with cross-cut editing between
the slaughter of a bull and police attacking workers. He thereby creates a film
metaphor: assaulted workers = slaughtered bull. The effect that he wished to
produce was not simply to show images of people's lives in the film but more
importantly to shock the viewer into understanding the reality of their own lives.
Therefore, there is a revolutionary thrust to this kind of film making.32

29 John Pultz, Equivalence, Symbolism, and Minor White’s Way into the Language of
photography. Record of
the Art Museum, Princeton University, vol 39, no. 1&2, 1980 page 29 para 3
30 John Pultz, ibid page 29 para 8
31 Minor White, The Eye That Shapes, Memorable Fancies April 2nd 1950 Aperture, Inc
page 26
32 Academic dictionaries and encyclopedias ,
http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/4543825 10/11/2009

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 Though Eisenstein’s cinema is deeply rooted in Soviet Socialist realism, and is plainly
narrative in intent, this is where White parts company from Eisenstein as White is most
assuredly dealing with a metaphysical narrative

As a device the sequential photography has been used by many photographers such as
Ansel Adams, Minor White through Duane Michaels to Walter Chappell and has the ability
to develop either a narrative or to expand an idea’s breadth and depth. White said that when
one engages with a sequence one is approaching it as one would a Zen koan, which is part of
Zen Buddhist lore. A koan is a statement or question, rather like the western riddle that poses
the recipient a meaning that may not be logically answered by the mind but can be accessed
through intuition. One of White most well know sequences “The sound of one hand
Clapping” is based on one of the best know koan. "Two hands clap and there is a sound; what
is the sound of one handing?" 33

The answer to the question is the action of thrusting ones hand forward and engaging
the master in what seems to the western mind to be a bizarre a series of dialogues and actions
that convey an understanding of spiritual tenant the Koan is used to teach. This particular
Koan is said to be the first taught to the monk and takes up to 3 years to master. (See
Appendix One.)

And White in his own way tried throughout his life to teach the public a different way
of seeing photography much as Stieglitz had. Were a Koan is used as a spiritual teaching
method, to train the Buddhist neophant in new ways of subjectively interpreting the creative
processes of the mind. So White sees a sequence of equivalent photographs very much like
poetic juxtapositions of words with many different meanings. These photographs become the
scenes of his cinema of stills and are intended to convey a meaning to the viewer who is open
to personal growth and exploration and as a whole become one Equivalent in themselves.

Here we arrive at for Minor White what was as important as any other element in the
production of a sequence, “The Viewer.” He sees the spectator as an integral part of the
sequence equation. The final component that will make the process operate as the artist
intended, to White the viewer is as important as the artist themselves. The transcendence
conveyed by a series of photographs in a sequence of images can communicate a whole,
rounded and full experience that started with the conception of the creative impetus the artist
was compelled to initiate.
33 Traditional. 18th centaury Zen Buddhist Koan

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 White brings this method of artistic expression to us as a fully matured and complete
theory. The medium maybe photography, but this is also the only medium that can be used,
for the Equivalent Sequence the photographs used are of a realist nature and have the ability
to help us suspend the disbelief necessary for us to open our minds to alternative inner
realities the piece is intended to transfer.

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 Chapter Three

The Mountain once again becomes a Mountain

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 “Any man working with the medium sooner or later impinges, merges into
fuses with the fringes of mysticism. Camera Vision deliberately aims at the
outermost reaches that any medium can hope”34

To test the validity of the Equivalent we shall examine a Minor White Sequence,
“Sound of One Hand Clapping”35 mentioned earlier in connection with the Buddhist Koan.

The exhibit, called “The Sound of One Hand Clapping,” was being
shown in a small gallery in Massachusetts. Curious to see Minor’s work
in person, I drove up from New York. What I saw moved me in a way I
was totally unprepared for. Minor was a “straight photographer,” which
meant he didn’t manipulate his images during the developing process.
Yet Minor’s way of using natural light and shadows to produce a wide
range of tonality in his prints was incredible. Looking at his
photographs, I felt myself being thrust into another realm of
consciousness. I realized then that there was a lot more to
photography than I had previously imagined.36

The ten photographs that make up the sequence were made between 1957 and 1962.
This shows White had no qualms about constructing a sequence from photographs made
years apart or ones that had been made on the same day.

Bunnell says that White seemed to be able to remember every image

he had ever made.---Whenever a whole appeared in the evolving
scheme, White would study for minute, go to the file, and come back
with a contact. Sometimes it was a picture he had never printed, often
one he had not seen in years. If it did not work, he would remember
another one that did.37

The thesis will compare the sequence not only with the koan of its name sake but also
in conjunction with a more subjective personal interpretation. These ten rectangular black and
white zone system images are set out with blank pages next to the first three photographs.
From photograph three to nine they are on adjacent pages, followed by a quotation on its own
page and finally the tenth image.

34 Minor White, “Five Reviews of Under the Sun” Aperture 8:4 1960 page 205
35 Minor White, “Sound of One Hand Clapping” appeared in a number of differing forms,
I will only be
concerned with the sequence as it appears in ” Minor White Rites & Passages”
Aperture, Inc 1978
pages 96-109. As White passed away in 1976 it is not know if the sequence is White
arrangement.
36 John Daido Loori, “Meeting Men on the Way”,
http://www.tricycle.com/feature/meeting-a-man-way Nov
28 2009
37 Minor White, ”Minor White Rites & Passages” Aperture, Inc 1978 page 93 para 5

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“Sound of One Hand Clapping”
Minor White, 1965

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No Matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still
Long enough for the photographer it has chosen.

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 Initially the sequence as a whole produces the sensation that we are in the presence of a
highly charged work of art. Initially it is not apparent that these are photographs, we see a
series of abstract black and white images. As a sequence it seems to form a coherent whole. It
is only as we take time to view each singularly and in combination with the adjacent images,
that we become aware that they are photographs of reality. Yet for us to find the reality
photographed is a very difficult task. The artist has made sure that we will have to apply
some effort to interpret, understand or find resonance with it.

Minor White found new ways to convey messages through his photography in
his Sequences; these were eight or more images strung together and viewed in
order. The relationships between each of the photographs in one of White’s
sequences were often difficult to comprehend without lengthy examination. One
such sequence, called "Sound of One Hand Clapping" includes images that
appear to be abstract, solarized prints, or perhaps photographs of sand made
from damaged negatives. These images give us some deep insight into the
potential of the equivalent within Minor White’s uses of symbolism.38

Gantz tells us that White is trying to communicate with us in a new way; again we find
that this is in a non literate way. Though poetic in nature this non verbal language is out of our
normal experience, these forms are not easily identifiable, the symbolism is obtuse. We are
forced to find new frame of reference, where new waypoints are needed to help us map
White’s consciousness. He is showing us microcosmic images that link us with White by the
archetypical symbols of the collective subconscious.

Many students of White’s work seem to jump to the conclusion that because White had
closeted bisexual tendencies that the inner meaning of his Sequences and Equivalents will
always be sex. Yujiro Otsuki seems to see what he wishes to see when he describes
“Windowsill Daydreaming” (Photography 3 “Sound of One Hand Clapping”)

38 Ryan Gantz. “The Transmissions of Minor White”

http://www.sixfoot6.com/words/essays/minorwhite.htm 22/10/2010

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 I can see bodies, heads, arms, legs, and also their penises, moving and enjoying
their multiple ecstasies. Interestingly, the opened window helps viewers breathe
and rest from such an intense moment in the subtext of this seemingly calm and
peaceful image. Maybe I have gone too far in reading his vision here, but I cannot
help seeing his image in such a sexual way.39

Pultz argues the same with his examination40 of the sequence “Song with Out Words”,
showing that this sequence can be interpreted as a metaphor for the sexual act, but to say all of
White’s sequences are about sex is to ignore his most important motivation, that of his
spiritual journey.

Transformation

As we shall see title and date are given for each image although in most cases they help
little in the decoding the meaning of “Sound Of One hand Clapping”. The sequence starts
with a landscape image” Metal Ornament” who’s main content are two intertwined circles
within an oval form, initially this looks like a shell or bowl that has been marked at some time
of its existence. This is followed by a space and then “Burned Mirror” which it’s contrasting
shades and shapes it is reminiscent of the Yin Yang symbol. Again we are presented with an
empty space. White is giving us another chance to breathe and take stock before we move to
the third image. “Windowsill Daydreaming” this image in its own right is one of his most
famous; seen singularly it is maybe an easier introduction to his work. We can recognise the
play of light through curtains on a windowsill. This is as close as we will get to realism in the
sequence; it contains the same oval form that has run through the previous two images. Yet
just as this single cell arrives into the world of known substance, we find it juxtaposed next to
a swirling vortex of glistening textures suspended in a black sea that is “Galaxy”, the eye of
this storm has taken on the now familiar oval shape, yet here it is most defiantly in flux. We
are swept into the next image “Empty Head” and here the ellipse has begun a kind of cell
division, it seems that we are spectators at some, monumental cosmic event.

39 Yujiro Otsuki. “Mirror of Pathos” http://www.yujirootsuki.com/personal/nakedman.htm

11/09/2010
40 John Pultz, ibid

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 In the sixth photograph the egg, though present is taking second place to a series of
alternate black and white parallel lines that White calls a “Dumb Face”, this image is a
distinctive change in formal content and begins the second half of the sequence. This and the
next two photographs “Frost Wave” and “Christmas Ornament” both have a cascading wave
starting on the left and falling to the right, we have reached a peak with “Frost Wave” this is
the centre of the transformation “Christmas Ornament” again brings us back momentarily to
the material world we see a Christmas decoration hanging on the inside of a frost covered
glass door, the heat of the room has melted the frost and formed the wave the runs from left to
right, a small but important motif is the Yale door lock in the lower right-hand corner of the
frame. With both the Christian and Pagan connotations Christmas being imparted here we are
given a definite guide to the spiritual solution held within the sequence. The penultimate
picture “Ritual Branch, Frost on Window” is a landscape photograph with same orientation as
the first in the sequence. It seems to be working with pagan themes, the patterns made by the
frost can be likened to stone and the branch to a primitive fresco. Is this photographic cave
painting telling us the same spiritual questions that arise today are the same as those faced by
man from the birth of sentient consciousness?

White adds a final empty space before his final image “Icicle in Light”, we are intended
to see this picture as a coda to the previous nine images, and it is set apart, yet can be seen as
a logical conclusion to the sequence. We see a circle of light dissected by two black shafts
these are the icicles of the title, though they are not photographed to show them as icicles. We
are shown a future were the possibilities of Divine pure spirit (represented by the point of
light) can and will by eclipsed by darkness, be that by ignorance or circumstance but it will
always return in accordance with natural cycles. We who find inner freedom find true
freedom and these cycles of good and bad become irrelevant, this is essentially the meaning
of the Koan as explained by Zen Master Hakuin. (See Appendix two)

Minor White has taken us through a journey of spiritual transformation from a single
cell to an escape from this mortal coil. He has shown us a peak experience very much in the
transcendental tradition. White’s use of the sequence is a most powerful tool in his expression
of the human condition; he can construct layers of meaning in conjunction with visually
sensual experience. White could not stress heavily enough how important the viewer was to
his work, what the viewer took from and brought to the sequence was as important as the
making of the photograph or the order of the sequence. If there is no viewer how we can have

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an Equivalent, for the equivalent must have the human consciousness of the person interacting
with the work for it to operate as an Equivalent.

The Sequential Equivalent has the ability to convey very complex and personal ideas
and situations. These abilities can be used to make work that has a far more complex,
conceptual meaning then many of the staged conceptual pieces of the post modernists, yet still
remain very personal.

we feel that we are trespassing his private mind space. Since he was only open to
the ones who could be sympathetic to his visions, this is probably what he wanted
us to discover. His deliberately disclosed photographs seem to transmit some kind
of subliminal signals to the ones who want to receive and understand his
feelings.41

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

It is in the power of a sequence of equivalent photographs that we find the real power to
communicate a particular complex set of circumstances or emotions. White has perfected a
photographic discipline that once mastered will free the photographer from material world,
were that world becomes the raw material for expression and not as a source of
documentation.

“....perhaps his most important inspiration was the sequences of Alfred Stieglitz
begun in the 1920s. Stieglitz taught that not all photographs need function as
individual or summational works, but that certain images in a structured context
could serve in support of others and could create a total statement more complex
and multifaceted than single works alone or loose assortments of related
pictures.42

The sequence has the same power and many similarities with montage in cinema, the
work of the early soviet film maker Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein produces much the same
effect as the photographic sequence as practiced by Stieglitz and White. The same
psychological effects are in action if in a different manner, time and motion taking on a very
different set of meanings in the “Cinema of Stills” that White makes with his photographic
sequences.

41 Yujiro Otsuki. ibid

42 Peter C. Bunnell. Minor White, The Eye That Shapes. New Jersey: Princeton University,
1989

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 He (Eisenstein ) argued that "Montage is conflict" (dialectical) where new ideas,
emerge from the collision of the montage sequence (synthesis) and where the new
emerging ideas are not innate in any of the images of the edited sequence. A new
concept explodes into being.43

The similarities between the two theories are so many that one wonders how much
Stieglitz had been influences be early soviet cinema, he was sure to have seen Eisenstein’s
films on his frequent trips to Europe. But it is Minor White who brought the “Sequential
Equivalence” to perfection. Even as the influence of montage in cinema began to wane and
was overwhelmed by the melodramatic screenplays of the talkies. The technical advances that
brought about the demise of the use of montage in cinema, forced film makers to abandon one
of the most important devices of cinema, to communicate without the use of the spoken word.
Even though Sequential Equivalence has had no direct technical advance to date it, as White
seemed to sense it induces an inherent kind of generational amnesia and must be rediscovered
from time to time.

43 Sergi Mikhailovich Eisenstein, “Academic dictionaries and encyclopedias”

http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/4543825 20/01/2010

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Conclusion

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 As was shown with our examination of pure abstraction, an abstract may have a
meaning but it is usually left to the viewer to identify the meaning, this is related to their own
life experience. This meaning that the onlooker finds within themselves will not necessarily
be the purpose the artist had intended. It may have no relation to the meaning intended by the
artist, as the pure abstraction has no recognisable narrative elements within it. The abstract is
relying on a kind of artistic Rorschach test, though without been given any known and
recognisable sign posts in guide us. Because this works ambiguously on the observer, it is
open to numerous forms of analysis and various interpretations.

It has been found that the abstract image that is to operate as an equivalent has to
convey the artist’s intention in a manner that will be understood by the viewer open and
aware of the involvement required of them to participate in the process. Though Stieglitz
used clouds as a medium to express his feelings about music, they may seem now a little too
obvious to our educated eyes. For its time Stieglitz expected a very sophisticated level of
conscious effort from his audience. This is the reason the theory of equivalence fell out of
favour, Stieglitz continued to make cloud photographs but they became less obvious and easy
to read, he expected people to see the smallest of nuances within these photographs of clouds.
Stieglitz had in effect painted himself into a corner; by limiting himself to what he thought
was an ever changing, formless, transmuting mass of vapour. But in fact became
meaningless, formless and obtuse photographs of clouds.

When Minor White arrived back in the USA after the war in the pacific, he was looking
for a new photographic path to follow. White through his own work had already
experimented with the “series”, finding this to be a rich vein of expressive and narrative
photographic presentation. The vast possibilities available within the serial form had given
White the glimpse he sought into the true power of the “Cinema of Stills”.

As explored in chapter three the final piece of the puzzle was Stieglitz explanation of
equivalence, here was the key to unlock photography’s ability to transform photographs from
documents to art. Stieglitz had found the fertile ground that equivalence needed to progress as
an artistic practise. It is with the combination of both these theories, that of equivalence and
the sequence. That the power of the both is amplified “Sequential Equivalence” becomes the
logical fusion to give us an art-form that has the potential to express the artists simplest or
most complex of notions. White had found ways to use the raw material of the world around

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us as the very medium of expression itself. Accordingly even a photograph of a car park or
Town House is the basis for an equivalent. With the added potentialities made available by
the Juxtaposition of abstract and representational photographs, our experience is augment by
yet another level of meaning.

Fi
g 6 Iceland John Paul Caponigro 2009

As discussed earlier “Sequential Equivalence” becomes one of the most powerful forms
of photographic expression. We can see how this amalgamation gives the artist an
unparalleled visual vocabulary. With the series of the images there is an even stronger
analogy with music and poetry, were rhythm, tempo, repetition, and rest, all have a place in
the artist’s creative arsenal.

Stieglitz either by design or by chance found a theory that will recur in the words of
White’s essay “Equivalence the Perennial Trend.”As a means of expression the Equivalence
takes practice and patience to master, as a means of artistic expression to use the equivalence
one must master inner and outer space as produced/reproduced with the camera’s definitive

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qualities. The hyper reality that the Zone System produces is a technique that is essential for
the heighted awareness an Equivalent requires to awaken the mind to new interpretation of
what may seem very recognizable images. In recent years digital capture and image editing
software have augmented the available tools at the artist’s disposal. While new artists who
are working with equivalents like John Paul Caponigro son of White’s student Paul
Caponigro, is taking the theory forward by compounding the mechanical process with the
addition of digital of reproduction, while as an artist he is still exploring the spiritual nature
of mankind and his relation to nature, the tradition started by Stieglitz carried forward by
White and passed onto him. This exploration of life both inner and outer and our response to
it, started with Stieglitz wanting to photograph clouds.

Appendix One

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Q. What is the sound of one hand clapping?44

A. According to the book The Sound of the One Hand: 281 Zen Koans With Answers, translated by
Yoel Hoffman, the answer is an action, thrusting out one's hand, followed by a dialogue with the
teacher. According to the book, the dialogue might go something like this:

Master: In clapping both hands a sound is heard: what is the sound of the one hand?
Student: The pupil faces his master, takes a correct posture, and without a word, thrusts one hand
forward.
Master: If you've heard the sound of the one hand, prove it.
Student: Without a word, the pupil thrusts one hand forward.
The pupil is not taken in by "prove it." He evades explanations by simply implying "that's it."
Master: It's said that if one hears the sound of the one hand, one becomes a Buddha. Well then, how
will you do it?
Student: Without a word, the pupil thrusts one hand forward.
The pupil is not taken in by "enlightenment-non-enlightenment." His answer implies "here, now."
Master: After you've become ashes, how will you hear it?
Student: Without a word, the pupil thrusts one hand forward.
Master: What if the one hand is cut by the Suimo Sword (the sharpest of all swords)?
Student: It can't be.
or
Student: If it can, let me see you do it.
or
Student: Without a word, the pupil thrusts one hand forward.
There is nothing to be cut. Cut nothing and you still have nothing.
Master: Why can't it cut the one hand?
Student: Because the one hand pervades the universe.
Master: Then show me something that contains the universe.
Student: Without a word, the pupil thrusts one hand forward.
Master: The before-birth-one hand, what is it like?
Student: Without a word, the pupil thrusts one hand forward.
The pupil is not taken in by "life-death." The notion of "before life" is artificial and can be
entertained only while alive.
Master: The Mt. Fuji-summit-one-hand, what is it like?
Student: The pupil shading his eyes with one hand, takes the pose of looking down from the summit
of Mt. Fuji and says, "What a splendid view."
Master: Attach a quote to the Mt. Fuji-summit-one-hand.
Student: (quote) Floating clouds connected the sea and the mountain, And white flat plains spread
into the states of Sei and Jo.
There is no need to speculate too much about the meaning of quotes. The pupil responds to "summit"
in a natural way by describing the view from the summit.
Master: Did you hear the sound of the one hand from the back or from the front?
Student: Extending one hand, the pupil repeatedly says, "Whether it's from the front or from the back,
you can hear it as you please"
The question is a trap. The master tests whether the pupil is taken in by the distinction or not. The
"sound of the one hand" is not to be located spatially. Nevertheless it is not unrelated to space.
Master: Now that you've heard the sound of the one hand, what are you going to do?
Student: I'll pull weeds, scrub the floor, and if you're tired, give you a massage.
The student answers according to his own situation.

44Traditional. 18th centaury Zen Buddhist Koan

http://web.archive.org/web/20070125230458sh_re_/www3.tky.3web.ne.jp/~edjacob/koan
.html 27/12/09

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Master: If it's a convenient thing, let me hear it too!
Student: Without a word, the pupil slaps his master's face.
By slapping he implies that the master should not underestimate his understanding of the koan.
Master: The one hand--how far will it reach?
Student: The pupil places his hand on the floor and says, "This is how far it goes."
Another trap question.
Master: The before-the-fifteenth-day-one-hand, the after-the-fifteenth-day-one-hand, what's it like?
Student: The pupil extends his right hand and says, "This is the before-the-fifteenth-day-one-hand."
Extending his left hand he says, "This is the after-the fifteenth-day-one-hand." Bringing his hands
together he says, "This is the fifteenth-day-one-hand."
Master: The sublime-sound-of-the-one-hand, what is it like?
Student: The pupil immediately imitates the sound he happens to hear when sitting in front of his
master. That is, if it happens to be raining outside, he imitates the sound of rain, if at that moment a
bird happens to call, he imitates a bird's call.
Master: The soundless-voice-of-the-one-hand, what is it like?
Student: Without a word, the pupil abruptly stands up, then sits down again, bowing in front of his
master.
Master: The true sphere of the one hand, what's it like?
Student: "I take it to be as fleeting as a dream or phantom, or as something like an illusory flower.
That's how I think of it."
Master: The source of the one hand, what is it?
Student: "On the plain there is not the slightest breeze that stirs the smallest grain of sand.
(quote)
All communication with places north of the
White Wolf River is disconnected,
And south to the Red Phoenix City,
autumn nights have grown so long."

According to Hoffmann, this Koan was composed by a Master Hakuin in the 18th century. It is
the first Koan that a student is given when he enters a temple. The Koan cannot be explained by logic
and can take up to three years to solve.

Appendix Two

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 “What is the Sound of the Single Hand? When you clap together both hands a
sharp sound is heard; when you raise the one hand there is neither sound nor
smell. Is this the High Heaven of which Confucius speaks? Or is it the essentials
of what Yamamba describes in these words: "The echo of the completely empty
valley bears tidings heard from the soundless sound?" This is something that can
by no means be heard with the ear. If conceptions and discriminations are not
mixed within it and it is quite apart from seeing, hearing, perceiving, and
knowing, and if, while walking, standing, sitting, and reclining, you proceed
straightforwardly without interruption in the study of this koan, you will suddenly
pluck out the karmic root of birth and death and break down the cave of
ignorance. Thus you will attain to a peace in which the phoenix has left the golden
net and the crane has been set free of the basket. At this time the basis of mind,
consciousness, and emotion is suddenly shattered; the realm of illusion with its
endless sinking in the cycle of birth and death is overturned. The treasure
accumulation of the Three Bodies and the Four Wisdoms is taken away, and the
miraculous realms of the Six Supernatural Powers and Three Insights is
transcended.”45

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