On Narcissism

I wrote this in an email to a science colleague who asked about my work as a photographer.

I am sort of an acolyte of Minor White's. Do you know Minor? He was a very controversial bird. Gay before one was supposed to be. Christian and existentialist when these seemed contradictory. Dada in a medium where there was no commercial value to found art.

But the main issue was that Minor felt photography was a form of narcissism and taught that worrying about how others react to what one sees is destructive of the effort to learn to see, Needless to say, Minor upset the gallery scene because he took this idea to a point wher if you can "see: why do you need to print? I taught "Minor" in socal (UCLA and Orange Coast College) and here in Seattle. The easy part was teaching zone system, printmaking and composition. Minor had a great way of combining zones with zen!

Much harder was figuring out how to critique work while observing Minor's admonition that anything I said to a student might harm her ability to "see" themselves. My biggest success was a wonderful young man who also had a drug problem. One day we got a phine call that Ron had taken his life. I treasure te one image of his I still have.