Clarence H. White
Born in West Carlisle, OH, 8 April 1871; died in Mexico City, 8 July 1925).
American photographer and teacher. A self-taught photographer, he began taking photographs in 1893 and soon developed a style that showed the influence of Whistler, Sargent and Japanese prints. He was elected to the Linked ring group of Pictorial photographers in 1900 and was a leading member of the Photo-secession from 1902. His evocative photographs of rural landscapes and of his family celebrate the joys and virtues of the simple, middle-class way of life that existed in the USA before World War I (e.g. Ring Toss, 1899; New York, Met.)
By 1906 White was already a major figure in American photography and moved to New York, where he began a close professional and artistic relationship with Alfred Stieglitz that lasted until 1912. His work was published in Camera Work in July 1903, Jan 1905, July 1908, July 1909 and Oct 1910. In 1908 he began teaching photography, founding in 1910 his own Summer School of Photography in Seguineland, ME, with F. Holland Day, Max Weber and Gertrude Käsebier, and the highly successful and influential Clarence White School of Photography in New York in 1914. Although his own photography went into decline during the last decade of his life, his students included Laura Gilpin, Karl Struss (1886–1991), Dorothea Lange, Paul Outerbridge, Ralph Steiner (1899–1986) and Anton Bruehl.
Retrieved from Oxford Art Online: http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T091401?q=Clarence+H.+White&search=quick&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit (Accessed Feb. 21, 2012)
