Comparing Photographers Minor Martin White And Peter Keetman

Introduction

Photographers Minor Martin White and Peter Keetman have not share much in common as for methods, subjects, or style. Although, their captured images challenge viewers to look beyond the obvious and to overcome narrow ideas of photography. Peter Keetman settles the viewer by producing images of repetition in flowing patterns of enlightenment through an industrial medium; however, Minor White hypnotizes the viewer in his poetic gaze of obscurity. In this paper I compare White and Keetman as indisputable contributors in sculpting the photography world. Although, it appears White and Keetman share a connection as photographers, their lives and passions are in comparison, similar. I reveal, in my research the shocking similarities these two brothers of photography share.

Minor White’s exhibits and galleries are vast although, when he died in 1976, he bequeathed his entire archive to Princeton University. A previous student of White’s; Peter C. Bunnell, was a professor and curator of the university’s art museum and had helped ease the obtainment of the collection. This consisted of over 26,000 pieces of his work include negatives, undocumented finished photographs, and the artist’s archive of personal and public writing, and exhibition notes. Princeton University has all the images online to view free. (Minor White Archive Princeton University Art Museum) B. Peter Keetman has had several galleries and museum exhibitions, including at the Harvard Art Museums and at the Deichtorhallen. Then, on the 100th anniversary of Peter Keetman’s birth in 2016, Museum Folkwang and Stiftung F.C. Gundlach presented the first comprehensive retrospective of the photographer’s work. Some 360 images tried to present Keetman life work. The images online are in part of Keetman’s photography. I suspect in Germany, where the artist originates, the photographs are accessible to the public. (Keetman, 2017)