There's no particular class of photograph that I think is any better than any other class. I'm always and forever looking for the image that has spirit! I don't give a damn how it got made.
Interpretation
The essence of a photograph lies in its spirit, not in its class or technique.
In this quote, Minor White emphasizes the importance of the underlying spirit or essence of a photograph over its technical qualities or classification. He believes that any photograph, regardless of how it was created or the category it falls into, can possess beauty and meaning, suggesting that the emotional impact is what truly matters in photography.
In practice
During an art exhibition speech emphasizing the emotional connection to photography.
While we cannot describe its appearance (the equivalent), we can define its function. When a photograph functions as an Equivalent we can say that at that moment, and for that person the photograph acts as a symbol or plays the role of a metaphor for something that is beyond the subject photographed.
The reason why we want to remember an image varies: because we simply 'love it,' or dislike it so intensely that it becomes compulsive, or because it has made us realize something about ourselves, or has brought about some slight change in us. Perhaps the reader can recall some image, after the seeing of which he has never been quite the same.
Some of the young photographers today enter photography where I leave off. My "grandchildren" astound me. What I worked for they seem to be born with. So I wonder where Their affirmations of Spirit will lead. My wish for them is that their unfolding proceeds to fullness of Spirit, however astonishing or anguished their lives.
One does not photograph something simply for 'what it is', but 'for what else it is.
One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are.
If all your life means to you is water running over rocks, then photograph it, but I want to create something that would not have existed without me.
The first long chapter of my career was almost entirely theater so that, by the time I was 30, 35, I sort of knew who I was as an actor, and I was gradually learning who I was as a human being.
Filmmaking, like any other art, is a very profound means of human communication; beyond the professional pleasure of succeeding or the pain of failing, you do want your film to be seen, to communicate itself to other people.
To be a film-maker, you are almost forced to be surrounded by contradictions... You must have talents of so many different kinds - talents that are contradictory.
I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient.
You know, young actors say all the time, 'Should I use my own life experience?' And my response is, 'What choice do you have?'
I'm always struck by the kids who turn up in New York and LA, and places in between. Chicago. Wanting to do theater, wanting to do independent film. Wanting to break into television or radio.
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