page_title: Clarence Hudson White
section_title: 1899-1906: Advancing his art
hierarchical_section_title: Clarence Hudson White / Life / 1899-1906: Advancing his art
caption_attribution_description: further information: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/55206
context_page_description: Clarence Hudson White was an American photographer, teacher and a founding member of the Photo-Secession movement. He grew up in small towns in Ohio, where his primary influences were his family and the social life of rural America. After visiting the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, he took up photography. Although he was completely self-taught in the medium, within a few years he was internationally known for his pictorial photographs that captured the spirit and sentimentality of America in the early twentieth century.
  As he became well known for his images, White was sought out by other photographers who often traveled to Ohio to learn from him. He became friends with Alfred Stieglitz and helped advance the cause of photography as a true art form. In 1906 White and his family moved to New York City in order to be closer to Stieglitz and his circle and to further promote his own work. While there he became interested in teaching photography and in 1914 he established the Clarence H. White School of Photography, the first educational institution in America to teach photography as art.
context_section_description: By 1899 White was so well known that he had one-man shows at both the Camera Club of New York and at the Boston Camera Club, and he also exhibited in the London Photographic Salon organized by The Linked Ring. When the Newark Camera Club organized a major exhibit of pictorial photography, White exhibited 135 of his works. This show later was seen at the Cincinnati Art Museum. In addition to this series of exhibitions, one of White's simple family scenes, a portrait of his son Maynard, was reproduced in Stieglitz's new journal Camera Notes.
  This same year White's father died at the relatively young age of 52. His death did not seem to affect his son's artistry or his interests; White continued exhibiting while traveling around the Midwest and East Coast to take portraits of friends and clients. On one of these trips he journeyed to Terre Haute, Indiana, where he was introduced to rising socialist leader Eugene Debs. White became close friends with Debs and other socialist leaders, including Clarence Darrow, Stephen Marion Reynolds and Horace Traubel, and for many years they exchanged correspondence and held long, philosophical discussions whenever they were in the same city together. White's belief in socialist values was one of the few pursuits other than photography for which he expressed any enthusiasm. After a prolonged visit with Reynolds, White wrote "I've never spent a week so full of inspiration since I've used a camera." His family, "brass-bound Republicans", hoped this interest was a temporary aberration, but White continued to express his affinity for these beliefs throughout his life.
  In 1900 White was elected to membership in The Linked Ring, and he was both a juror and exhibitor at the Chicago Photographic Salon and the Third Philadelphia Photographic Salon. Eager for his discovery Edward Steichen to meet Stieglitz, he provided Steichen with a letter of introduction and insisted that Stieglitz see him soon. Steichen stopped over in New York on his way to Paris, and he and Stieglitz became long-time friends and colleagues. During this same period F. Holland Day, over Stieglitz's objections, organized a major exhibition in London called "The New School of American Photography." More than two dozen of White's photos were included in the show, which was later seen in Paris and in Germany. In his writings, Day said "Mr. White [is] the only man of real genius known to me who has chosen the camera as his medium of expression."
  About this same time White wrote to Stieglitz "I have made up my mind that art in photography will be my life work and am prepared to live a very simple life with my little family to carry this out." His words were very prophetic since he struggled financially all of his life; he was known as a poor businessman and a great photographer.
  A little more than a year later, Stieglitz, sensing a growing number of photographers who held his same beliefs about the artistry of the medium, founded the Photo-Secession, the first organization in America to promote pictorialism and fine art photography. He invited White and 10 others to become "charter members", although Stieglitz himself strictly controlled what the group did. Immediately Stieglitz began planning how to best advance the work of his new organization, and within a short while he organized an exhibition of the groups' photographs, including several by White,  at the National Arts Club. Soon thereafter Stieglitz created another new magazine he called Camera Work to further display the work of the Photo-Secessionists. White had five of his photographs reproduced in the July 1903 issue and five more in January 1905. To be included in Camera Work and to be a member of the Photo-Secession meant that White was one of the inner circle of Stieglitz's friends at a time when Stieglitz was considered to be one of the top promoters of art photography in the world.
  At that time the use of photographs to illustrate literature was a new and untested concept, but beginning in 1901 White undertook three different projects to illustrate literary works. He fi
caption: "Drops of Rain", 1903
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