Warehouse Area, San Francisco

As a photographer, teacher and editor, Minor White exerted great influence on American photography in the 1950s and 1960s. Motivated by a variety of ideas including Christian mysticism, Zen philosophy, the teachings of Russian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff and Jungian psychology, White ultimately saw the camera as a tool of self-discovery. He believed that even the most subjective moods and emotions could be expressed in visual metaphor. This image was originally made as part of a series called Movement Studies, wherein White explored the idea of people “caught in the act of becoming something else.”