vure prints, and his association with Alfred Stieglitz
not only produced a seminal professional associa-
tion, but a pioneering series of sensual nudes that
remain extraordinarily modern and vital.
Early life in Ohio for Clarence Hudson White
(1871–1925) centered on his birthplace of West
Carlisle and nearby Newark, where he graduated
from high school and then became a bookkeeper
for a wholesale grocery firm. The scenery was pic-
turesque, the workday was long, the family, Pres-
byterian and Republican. This milieu shaped his
vision which, in turn, would have a major impact
on photography.
Only a year into his marriage to Jane Felix in
1893, White carefully budgeted for a Premo 6½
8½ view camera with a 13-inch portrait lens. Such
lenses were ground to produce soft effects, but
White’s typically misty images were often from hav-
ing to photograph during free time shortly after
dawn or before sunset. Lacking both academic art
and photographic training, he was not rule bound,
so he experimented with light and form, and was
restricted only by his limited means.
By 1898, White was accepted in the Philadelphia
Salon where the noted photographer Alfred Stie-
glitz was a jury member. The next year, White and
Stieglitz served on the Philadelphia Salon jury,
where White was impressed with Edward Steichen’s
work. Though White was now represented in the
London Salon, he did not neglect the local scene
and co-founded with Emma Spence, the Newark
Camera Club, a group which attracted national
attention and brought noted photographers to the
small Ohio town. The Newark Camera Club was
also the first such organization to print a catalogue
of their annual show, which served as a model for
other clubs and organizations.
Through these activities and images such asRing
Tossof 1899, a dynamically composed scene of a
languid game played by three girls, White’s inter-
national credentials were firmly established when
he and New York portrait photographer Gertrude
Ka ̈sebier were elected to the Linked Ring Brother-
hood in 1900. This secession group from the Photo-
graphic Society of London, derived its name from
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and tried to pre-
sent new approaches including Impressionism, nat-
uralism, and gum bichromate printing.
Alfred Stieglitz, however, led the battle for photo-
graphy as art, and in 1902, he launched the Photo-
Secession with a show at the National Arts Club
followed by the publication ofCamera Workdated
January 1903. Clarence White was a founding mem-
ber of this organization, and his work was frequently
featured in this first American journal of modern-
ism. Sadakichi Hartmann, an art critic closely asso-
ciated with the Photo-Secession, had praised White’s
figure photography as early as 1900 and hailed his
Spring(1898) an ‘‘American masterpiece.’’ Pictorial-
ism had ties to the Arts and Crafts Movement, and
George Bicknell, writing in TheCraftsman(January
1906, p. 495), ‘‘ranked White with Stieglitz and
Edward J. Steichen’’.
White typically photographed his wife or her sisters
in long flowing gowns as they gracefully posed in a
bucolic setting. The images lack the sophistication of
John Singer Sargent’s women, as White’s soft plati-
num prints reflect an ethos untouched by the ‘‘Gilded
Age’’ormiddleclasswork.Whiteoftenseemstorelate
to the Pre-Raphaelite dream world of Edward Burne-
Jones, and, indeed, the Photo-Secessionists recog-
nized Julia Margaret Cameron’s photographs, many
of which are precursors to White’s work.
James McNeil Whistler, the American expatriate
artist in London, was a major influence on White’s
work such as Miss Grace (1898). Whistler’s at-
mospheric effects, emphasis on bold forms, and flat,
Japanese-style designs show relationships with pho-
tographs such as White’sMorning(1905). White said
little about his photographs and was no theorist, so it
is uncertain whether he intended specific meaning for
the frequently used glass globe.
In 1904, White left bookkeeping for commercial
photography, which took him throughout the mid-
west usually making portraits. In Terre Haute,
Indiana, he photographed an attorney who was as-
sociated with Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs.
White, who embraced Socialism, again showed a
link to Pre-Raphaelitism, for both John Ruskin
and William Morris were leaders of a Christian
Socialist movement in England. White’s politics
were idealistic, however, and were never evident in
his photographs or teaching.
New York was surpassing London as the art
photography center, and so in 1906, White moved
to the city, where he and Gertrude Ka ̈sebier showed
at the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession. The
following year, White and Stieglitz collaborated in
making nude studies, but more significant for
White’s future was Arthur Wesley Dow’s offer of a
photography position at Teachers College, Colum-
bia University. An added assignment at the Brook-
lyn Institute of Arts and Sciences further shifted
White’s prime activity from that of photographer
to teacher.
The aims of the Photo-Secession to gain recogni-
tion of photography as art seemed to be fulfilled
with the international exhibition at Buffalo’s
Albright Art Gallery in 1910. Differences between
Stieglitz and White developed, and these issues ledWHITE, CLARENCE