Minor White: Manifestations of the Spirit

This gorgeous collection of White's photographs documents an exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the first major showing of the artist's work since 1991.The book includes several complete series from the exhibition, which demonstrate the breadth of White's artistic concerns and personal passions, alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) erotic, contemplative, and abstractly sculptural. His photographs often evoke a spiritual, otherworldly realm while grounded in the concrete physical manifestations of the everyday world. For example, The Temptation of St. Anthony Is Mirrors, a sequence from the 1940s depicting White's student Tom Murphy, reflects the tenderness and pain of White's closeted homosexuality while referencing Christian martyrdom. White illuminates the sensuous yet transcendent orbs and crystalline filigree in a series shot in upstate New York called The Sound of One Hand. Martineau's accompanying essay, informative if not groundbreaking, provides a straightforward biography detailing various hardships in White's life and they impacted his art and inspired his teaching career. (July)