Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Photography as a Way of Life: Minor White, Aaron Siskind, and Harry Callahan

Photography as a Way of Life: Minor White, Aaron Siskind, and Harry Callahan

Fay, Brendan

Hardcover

Series: Publications of the Art Museum, Princeton University

Art HistoryPhotography History & CriticismPhotographers

Publisher Price: $68.00

ISBN10: 0691285454
ISBN13: 9780691285450
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: May 19 2026
Pages: 348
Weight: 5.00
Height: 1.70 Width: 9.70 Depth: 11.70
Language: English

A richly illustrated look at three visionary artists who charted new directions for photography in midcentury America

Minor White, Aaron Siskind, and Harry Callahan carved out a new role for photographers and their art in the decades after World War Two. Photography as a Way of Life traces how these influential teachers and theorists reimagined the medium as a livelihood and a life's work.

Together with growing markets for snapshots and photojournalism, the postwar years saw the emergence of photography as an established field of study in higher education. In this beautifully produced book, Brendan Fay takes readers from the late 1940s through the 1970s to explore how White, Siskind, and Callahan transformed the ways photography was taught, shown, and understood. Inclined toward abstraction and personally expressive images, they modeled a commitment to art in the face of commercial and professional pressures. In classrooms and private workshops and through exhibitions, photobooks, and magazines--including Aperture, with White as its founding editor--they offered training and inspiration while building a devoted audience for their pictures.

Blending stunning illustrations with rare archival material published here for the first time, Photography as a Way of Life brings together the work of three boldly inventive artists and educators who opened new possibilities for photography in postwar America and exemplified a vision of learning and living through photography.

Published in association with the Princeton University Art Museum

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