Christmas Ornament

Minor White was a prolific photographer, editor, and teacher, as well as a cofounder of the influential photography magazine Aperture. Influenced by his studies of Zen and mysticism, White employed a subjective approach to photography, in which the overall feeling and texture of an image take precedence over its content; indeed, he held that photographs could be metaphors for inner emotional states. White preferred to work in sequences rather than individual pictures, bringing images together in synthesis. This picture comes from a sequence titled “The Sound of One Hand Clapping” (the title relates to a Zen koan, or riddle), which features abstract close-ups of ice and snow. With a star shape atop a triangular composition, the organic forms in the frost of his apartment window suggest a Christmas tree. “One does not photograph something simply for ‘what it is,’” White wrote, “but ‘for what else it is.’”