Capitol Reef, Utah 1961

Minor White made this photograph, Capitol Reef, Utah, in the darkroom, with light, chemistry, and paper. It’s easy to see why a painter like me might respond to this image - look how White coaxes a world of greyscale tones from stone. It’s like he's painting with light! The eye is immediately drawn to the center where a bright, amorphous shape shimmers against the darker rock. White has such control over the printing process here. The texture is gorgeous, rugged, and surprisingly tactile. There's a beautiful, meandering crack in the upper right that leads the eye from the upper reaches of the rock down into the darkness. It reminds me a bit of Alfred Stieglitz's photographs of clouds, which he called "equivalents," using natural forms to evoke interior states. Both artists remind us that the world is always more than what it seems.