Clarence H White

Clarence H. White: The Reverence for Beauty 

Clarence H. White (1871 – 1925), an Ohio native, was born in West Carlisle, a small town in Coshocton County.  He grew up in Newark, Ohio, where he worked as a bookkeeper.  In his early twenties, White’s interest in the arts deepened and he became particularly fascinated by photography.  He learned the medium entirely on his own and, within a few years, he was entering and winning photographic competitions.

By the time he moved to New York in 1906, White’s work had been exhibited in Detroit, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Washington, New York, Boston, and Chicago, as well as abroad in London, Glasgow, Paris, Turin, and Vienna.  His pictures appeared in several national publications and they were featured in Charles Caffin’s influential book, Photography as a Fine Art.  He was elected to membership in The Linked Ring, a British organization of photographers who championed pictorial, as opposed to scientific or technical photography.

More importantly, White was a founding member of the Photo-Secession, an American group which, like The Linked Ring, championed Pictorialism.  Another founder was Alfred Stieglitz, the dominant voice of his time in art photography and, for that matter, in modernism in all of the visual arts. Other founding members included Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn, and Gertrude Kasebier.

Pictorialism has always been a somewhat vague term and may be especially so today.  But it had particular meaning from around the turn of the century through the First World War, when it stood for certain ideals of artistic photography.  These ideals included the belief that photographs could be more than merely mechanical, objective records of facts.  The Pictorialists declared that photography could reflect feelings, mood, atmosphere, the thoughts and the state of mind of the photographer.  In short, they believed that photography could be expressive, and no less so than traditional forms of art.

By 1917, the battle for art photography had been largely won and the work of the Pictorialists was already looking embarrassingly dated, excessively romantic, and overwrought. Stieglitz and Steichen forged ahead, creating newer, more recognizably modern work with each decade.  White, on the other hand, remained committed to those earlier values.  His work represents much of the best in Pictorialism, and the gentle, sensitive, subtle qualities of his pictures epitomize the ideals of that movement.

The following comments on White’s photography are taken from reviews by prominent critics of his time:

“…delicate, poetic charm…soft, singing whispers of tone…”

– Joseph T. Keiley

 

“…the emanations of a beautiful spirit.”

– Charles H. Caffin

 

“…a sincere, straightforward talent of rare refinement and never-tiring student in quest of beauty…”

– Sadakichi Hartmann

 

In addition to his considerable reputation as a photographer, Clarence White was perhaps even more influential as a teacher.  He began teaching in his hometown of Newark, Ohio.  Later, he taught at Columbia University in New York, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, and he established a summer school of photography, first in Maine, and later in Connecticut.

In 1914, he opened the Clarence H. White School of Photography in New York.  His students included an impressive roster of early and mid-century American photographers, including Dorothea Lange, Paul Outerbridge, Margaret Bourke-White, and Ralph Steiner.

White’s third son, Clarence H. White, Jr., continued the tradition of photographic teaching.  He founded and, for many years, directed the highly regarded photography program at Ohio University in Athens.  The current exhibition was created from a collection of photographs given to the University by the younger White.

Perhaps of particular interest is a point that Peter Bunnell makes repeatedly in his introduction to the exhibition catalog, specifically that White’s move to New York “actually diminished his abilities as a photographer.”  Bunnell believes that White drew his strength from his intimate familiarity with his Ohio roots.  Remote from the sources of his inspiration, White’s later pictures never seemed to have the conviction of his earlier work.

White’s pictures, like his ideas about Beauty, Truth, and Purity, his reverence for traditional, romantic values, and his belief in the primary importance of spirit are strikingly out of place in our contemporary culture.  Some viewers of the exhibition might consider the pictures to be little more than quaint artifacts from a remote past.  But many, perhaps, will also see more, and find themselves in touch with an artist whose vision can be wonderfully refreshing in its innocence and revelatory in its intensity.

Clarence White wrote very little about his art, but he has been remembered by many as a remarkably kind, gentle, and generous individual.  Bunnell quotes the recollection of his earliest student, Julia McCune, who thought he was “the greatest man I have ever known, a radiant soul, who urged me never to do anything carelessly, but with considered beauty.”

Sean Wilkinson
1986