Happy Birthday Minor White

Larry Wolf, Minor White 118th Birthday (2026)

matt__runs

https://www.instagram.com/matt__runs/

I knew watching @heatedrivalrytv was risky. I didn’t expect it to crack me wide open. Some stories don’t feel like fiction. They feel like memories, carried deep in your soul.

Matt Kenny @matt__runns 28 December 2025

Studio Day 50

Larry Wolf, Head Scan (2026)

Stolen? Borrowed?

Larry Wolf, Adam at the AI (2025)
gift from Robert Allerton

talking with Karen about Minor White

another visitor in the gallery asked: Minor White?

Yes, the photographer

He stole my friend Sheri's husband at a workshop

Stole him? Or borrowed for the workshop?

Stole him. 

 

The student so enraptured by the teacher to be stolen away

Tim's suggestion to actively misread misremember reimagine

To embody and make it my own.

Of all the bastards

These are the most beautiful

The ones I call my sons.

Minor White, Memorable Fancies 

15 December 1954

Reflective Saturday

The week ended with a "no" from the Allerton Hood Residency, though also encouraging future projects. As much as I've been focused on the possibility of that residency, I'm pausing in the gap of not knowing what's next. 

I went through my application material and pulled out some key phrases that speak of my art practice regardless of project or proposal. I've been talking with other artists. Here are words I'm reflecting on.

The Magic of Walking with a Camera

A Practice Retreat - A Portal

To Be Held - To Hold a Camera

Desire Lines - Traces in the Land

Inner Queer - Public and Private

Amateur = Love

Raging River

... feel its force

... see where it takes me

Trail of Death 

... traumatic clearing

... survivance 

Dawn & Dusk

... the sun is slant

... the mind is open

Dreaming

The Artist Is Dangerous

Dragons & Demons

Fire - In the Dark of Winter

Crucible - Cauldron - Caldera

Raw Edges - Deep Surprise - Not Knowing

Personal Inner Wild

Generative Spark - Something New Emerges

Creating Meaning

The Sphinx

A pair of sphinx face Allerton House, invoking Oscar Wilde's poem. Those words, too, echo in my mind.

Larry Wolf, View from My Porch (2025)

What Would Minor White Do?

Photograph who you really are

Venture into the landscape without expectations. 

Let your subject find you. 

When you approach it, you will feel resonance, a sense of recognition. If, when you move away, the resonance fades, or if it gets stronger as you approach, you'll know you have found your subject. 

Sit with your subject and wait for your presence to be acknowledged. 

Don't try to make a photograph, but let your intuition indicate the right moment to release the shutter. 

If, after you've made an exposure, you feel a sense of completion, bow and let go of the subject and your connection to it. 

Otherwise, continue photographing until you feel the process is complete.

Minor White's instructions to students at the Hotchkiss workshop in 1971
 as described by John Daido Loori in The Zen of Creativity (2004)

Pre-Workshop Reading List

Carlos Castaneda: A Separate Reality (1971)

Eugen Herrigel: Zen and the Art of Archery (1953)

Richard Boleslavsky: Acting: The First Six Lessons (1933)

Minor White's reading list for students at the Hotchkiss workshop in 1971
 as described by John Daido Loori in The Zen of Creativity (2004)

Larry Wolf, Shadow on Stone (2025)

The Reproductive Structure of a Fungi

Larry Wolf (2023)

see also The Mushroom at the End of the World

Photoshoot

Larry Wolf & Jasper Goodrich collaboration (2023)

True Beam

Larry Wolf, Personal Beam (2023)

Light Beam

Larry Wolf, Beam (2023)

making love to this emerging tender indestructible being

Making art
Making love
Making life

Coming
One breath
One stroke
Simultaneous

No past
Except 
The vast past
Here
Pregnant 
Now

All identities
All ways of being
Now

No self
No not self
No other
Not one
Not two
Being
Now

As the old ends, 
nothing works
As the new begins, nothing works
In the moment, 
just the moment

The subtle bold exertion of intention

to fail
queerly
tenderly 
lovingly

to make love 
in the moment
to make love 
to the moment
to make love 
to the art as it emerges
to love whatever emerges

coherent thought falls apart
metastatic
no center
no hold

this touch of 

hand 

of body

this touch of 

pen

pencil

marker

brush

And then

water

pigments

All flow and bleed and blend and move
Energy
Alive

Grief and joy in the same breath
Heartbreak in the flowering
To be new is to kill the old

no center
only fringe

passing sucks
pleasing sucks
covering sucks
let go of normal
be divergent

let go of scenery
let go of realism
let go of making sense
let go of a lifetime of becoming

nothing to work
nothing to achieve

desire
objectless hunger for life
breathe
listen
this moment
this experience
let go of the tight shoulders
let go of the crossed knees
let go of the urge for another gulp of water
let go of yet another book
let go of yet another idea
let go of yet another human to connect with
let go of fear of missing out
let go of fear of missing
let go of fear
let go
let
be

-- Larry Wolf, 11 February 2023

[Index of Poems]

Slow Release Disruption

Larry Wolf, ADT (2023)

Radiant Bones

Larry Wolf, Bone Scan (2023)

Excreted tracer is present in the urinary bladder.

Biopsy

Larry Wolf, Biopsy (2022)

Larry Wolf, Biopsy (2022)

Larry Wolf, Biopsy (2022)

First Look

Larry Wolf, MRI One (2022)

Four Musings on Grief

My Body

Freeze … my default reaction … don’t breathe… hold it in my gut.. be still, be invisible, don’t attract attention. The storm will blow over. The monster will get bored and move on. The sun and the moon will still rise and set even when I can’t see them.

Quiet tears … most often on reading when people stretch beyond their abilities to protect others. I was proud of myself that I sobbed and had to catch my breath while reading a eulogy at my father’s grave side. 

Early messages to not show emotion, to not be a cry baby, to not be so sensitive, to stop having my feelings hurt. Grow up. Get over it. Be a man.

Learning, training, to be present. Decades of meditation, coach training, meditation instructor training…  to be present for others pain, for my own pain. Learning the curse of spiritual bypass, of “everything is impermanent” and yet, some things are deeply moving and it’s necessary to honor that depth and profundity, not imagine it away. Being present without manipulation, without a desired outcome, without tilting the scales. Allowing the decades, generations, of shielding to gently, slowly, gradually fall away… or not.

An aging body. Sometimes nurtured. Sometimes ignored. Sometimes cursed. The only one I have. Mostly we're friends with each other. 

Birth Family - New York City Second and Third Generation Child of Jewish Immigrants

My father’s parents' deaths.. his mother died when he was away at college, his father died when he was away in the Navy with his wife and infant children…  his last discussion with his father was a fight over presidential politics … the betrayal of his father’s business partner uncles who didn’t include my father or his brother in the business going forward nor give them their fair share. My mother’s own loss when my father’s/her husband’s father died. He was the only adult male who supported her unconditionally. All of that loss was pushed aside, pushed down, in service to functioning in the world. Not a week of shiva. Not a year of morning minyan. I was two when this grandfather died. The shadow around that time still lingers.

There is a bigger cultural story in the disappearance of ancestral/extended family during the genocide of WW2 The pogroms of a generation earlier had sent my grandparents and their parents, aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins, in search of safety in Canada and the US. They rarely spoke of being refugees, and never of the gaping holes left in the web of a family, of a community, of a race (yes, being Jewish was then, and is sometimes now, a race, a “people'' with a language and for millennia only the folklore of a country, and now that country is an oppressive police state). Antisemitism continued in their new countries, in my country, though generally more subtly  than a mob riot or a military attack. Insidiously internalized, there was an overriding desire for safety - through assimilation for one branch of the family or living in the past of orthodoxy for another branch - neither approach has ever provided real safety. More than a shadow, a vast dark never-ending night.

Of course these attacks are not limited to any one group or race or time or place. Many sacred spaces have been invaded - synagogues, churches, mosques have all been scenes of terrorizing attack, descecration and murder. Trauma both strengthens and destroys family and community.

Lived Community - A Gay Male Out Since Shortly After Stonewall 

Going to a smoky gay bar was a refuge from pervasive inner and outer homophobia. It was also scary, stepping into the lion’s den, confronting my own sexual desires, fearing the stereotypes, finding tricks and friends and lovers… making a life. 

Seeking to counter the mainstream narrative with my own life, being as visible as I felt was safe. Taking control of the cultural message, with my immediate family, as part of the speaker bureau for LGBT student groups, as co-chair of Out in the Mountains (the Vermont LGBT monthly newsletter/magazine), interviewed by newspapers, testifying at state legislative hearings, attending local/regional Pride events and the Marches on Washington. 

And then, during and through that, the overwhelming tragedy of AIDS. The panic of an emerging pandemic, the vitriolic attacks by the Catholic church (and others), the turning away of the government (local, state, federal), … and the emerging community of activists fighting for our lives … Gay Men’s Health Crisis, ACT-UP, Gran Fury, Queer Nation … those groups defined an edge while others of us were working from the middle. I hunkered down in a dysfunctional, largely monogamous and always safer-sex relationship.  

It wasn’t all bleak.. there were doctors, nurses, hospitals, friends, family and neighbors who stepped through their fears to help… early confrontations led to lasting friendships… like that of Larry Kramer and Anthony Fauci… and eventually drugs, very very expensive drugs, that hold the virus in check (another soapbox for another time).

During that time, it was the plays - Larry Kramer’s Normal Heart, David Drake’s The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, Paul Rudnick’s Jeffrey, Tony Kushner’s blockbuster Angels in America that really spoke to me, in the communal space of a theater, in reading them out loud to myself. A place to cry in public without having to explain or interact or accept unwanted consolation. A way to cry in the sanctuary of my home. A catharsis.

There is a long tradition of communities creating quilts. The Names Project/AIDS Quil was a way to grieve together. I never made panels for friends who died, attended few funerals, keeping much of the details in the abstract, keeping much of the dying at a distance - while also visibly advocating for safer sex, for public health, for broader understanding, wearing a red rhinestone ribbon (we are FABULOUS).

The unveiling of the AIDS Quilt on the national mall in 1987 was heart wrenching and grounding - a sea of weeping people as we walked among the panels, a vast field of loss and love and remembering. It was near the Vietnam Memorial with its polished black granite wall of names, descending into the earth, another place of communal mourning, another naming of the dead.

Moments of “Enough!” Stonewall was one moment of “we’re not going to take this any more”.  Matthew Shepard’s brutal beating death was another “we’re too good at this public mourning and protest, this has to be a turning point for real change” (it would be another 20 years before the Federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act became law). And then mass murder at Pulse (lost in a wave of mass killings, in magazine offices in Paris, in synagogues in the US, in churches, in mosques, in schools, at concerts, …). 

There was a brief time of delusion between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers when global peace seemed imminent (let’s ignore Bosnia, let’s ignore Rwanda, let’s ignore police killing of blacks and the mass incarceration of multiple generations).

Breathe.

The music.. of the bar, the disco, the concert hall, to be danced to, sung in the shower, … the music of gay and lesbian bands, of ballard singers creating a new oral history, the Men’s and Women’s (and sometimes broadly LGBTQ) Choruses in cities large and small. Celebrating all of life. 

Making Art

In the past year or two, I have worked on a few art projects that address my many heritages, many losses, seeking deeper understanding, personal healing, and keeping a history alive.

They include: 

Pink Triangle Portraits - drawings of the men in the signature photograph of homosexuals lined up in a concentration camp.. to see them as individuals.. to imagine their life before.. and how they became a symbol for future generations to rally around.

https://www.larrywolf51.com/p/pink-triangle-portraits.html 

Rough Raw Reclaimed - a zine of personal archival photographs (and a couple from public archives) with accompanying text to tell my story of a personal and cultural journey.

https://www.larrywolf51.com/p/rough-raw-reclaimed.html 

To Hold Infinity - the grief of a friend at the sudden death of his beloved wife led to a folded paper altar.

https://www.larrywolf51.com/p/to-hold-infinity.html 

Picasso’s Guernica - not my art making, but Picasso’s. The progression of his response to the mass killings at Guernica is chronicled in the series of dated drawings and photographs of the work in progress, offering insights into the artistic process, one human's response to the actions of other humans. The effort and evolution of finding form to convey ideas and emotions. 

https://www.larrywolf51.com/2022/04/drawing-drawing-drawing-picassos.html

Queering Death - An Anthology of Questions

These musings were written for a reading group led by Kean O'Brien, Exploring Grief, Death and Trauma. They came from considering this anthology of questions: 

QUEERING DEATH: An Anthology of Questions is a workbook featuring questions compiled from the first Queering Death cohort. Use this anthology of questions as prompts for journaling, in conversations with loved ones, as an edgy ice-breaker, as demands to elected officials, in affinity groups, or however you see fit.

Written by the Queering Death Cohort 2020 

Too Much Coffee Not Enough Time

Emails with Stephen

Feels like too much coffee and not enough time these days. 

Remember when you used to ... 

Larry Wolf, Duffle (2017)

Ha.. I remember that guy...

... and our wonder filled time in San Francisco five (!) years ago ... planning for Courage Labs, the chat bot, Wisdom 2.0, morning practice sessions, walking and eating and living, discovering a book of essays by Rebecca Solnit in a neighborhood bookstore. Then flying off to a conference in Orlando.. all of that after a month on staff at a Karme Choling dathun.

Larry Wolf, Karme Choling 360 (2017)

I miss that guy.. I'm in a kind of mourning for him and his dreams.. 

Larry Wolf, Flying (2017)

While I play with color, shape and math magic

Larry Wolf, SIP Logo Hypar Permutations (2022)

Thanks for inviting that guy to the conversation

 

Intimate Space

Larry Wolf, Intimate Space (2019)

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (1991)
Third Avenue and East 137th Street, Bronx, NY. 

... In 1992 ... [Felix Gonzalez-Torres] exhibited, on twenty-four billboards around New York City, a photograph of an unmade double bed with two pillows bearing what appear to be the impressions of a couple's heads.

"Untitled" (1991) is striking because it makes such an intimate domestic scene so public. ... The all-white image of recent intimacy is soft and inviting, but it takes on a darker shade once we realize that 1991 was the year that Gonzalez-Torres's partner, Ross Laycock, died of AIDS after a long illness. At least retrospectively, then, the piece functions as a memorial, both celebrating their loving relationship and commemorating it. 

Yet this reading may tie the image too closely to autobiography, for the work also has a distinctly political edge. It is a protest and provocation that intervened in what was at the time a highly charged situation. The intimacy of the image and the publicity of its exhibition were particularly transgressive in the context of the hysterical reaction in the United States to the AIDS epidemic, which provoked fierce conservative attacks on homosexuality. 

If the work is viewed as a memorial, it is illuminating to observe how it inverts, point by point, the form of medieval tomb sculpture. Those monuments, made of enduring materials like bronze or marble and sheltered in the sacred space of a church, show royal or aristocratic couples lying in effigy side by side, their heads resting on hard pillows. "Untitled" seems to evoke these tombs but exchanges their features for the ephemerality, profanity, and democracy of the commercial billboard. More over, the couple in Gonzalez-Torres's posters is indicated only negatively, not by statuary but by the impressions left behind on pillows. 

Viewed now, in retrospect, the emptiness of the bed foretells the artist's own tragic death only five years later, in 1996.

from Photography Trace and Trauma - Margaret Iversen (2017)

Contextual Notes

I made the above photograph in 2019 as part of a self-portrait project, showing our bed after my husband and I had been reading in the morning. At the foot of the bed is a book of David Wojnarowicz's Rimbaud in New York photographs. Wojnarowicz made a mask from a photograph of Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet, and made portraits of himself and others wearing that mask in iconic New York locations. 

I began reading Margaret Iversen's Photography Trace and Trauma this week in preparation for a reading group that starts next month (Exploring Death, Grief and Trauma, led by Kean O'Brien at Latitude). Iversen's description of Felix Gonzales-Torres' Untitled 1991 reminded me of the photo that I created three years ago. I did not consciously remember Gonzales-Torres' photograph when I created mine, though it's certainly possible I had seen it in the past. In keeping with Iversen's text, that image could well have left a trace in my unconscious and influenced the image I created.

It is fascinating that evidence of a prior presence can speak powerfully about its absence in the present. 

A Strong Reaction

Larry Wolf, Maxi - Why Such A Strong Reaction! (2022)

The details don't matter but my reaction does. A friend asked whether my artwork is inspired by my mother. 

I felt a huge surge of anger, a fight-to-the-death need to defend my art as my own, to defend my independence, to defend my agency, to defend my life. Not of by or for my mother. Hell NO!

It was a momentary flash. I noticed it. He noticed it. Yikes!

Who or what am I protecting? What does that have to do with my mother? 

There's some ancient personal shit here... about being my own person... and who knows what else... I know... buried... by me... once upon a time. 

Time to do some excavating and some composting. Definitely something valuable here.

Slow Down. Relax. Breathe.

Larry Wolf, Hello Birch Coffee (2021)

I was visiting my mother in her apartment last July. We would have breakfast and dinner together. I would usually go out during the day to run errands or to visit a museum. On a typical day, I would get up before her and take a walk to Birch Coffee on 88th Street, about 10 minutes away. I would talk with my husband Eric on the phone as I walked there and bring my Americano back to her apartment. We'd make breakfast and sit together to eat it. 

Are You Breathing?

On the second or third day, I was rushing through breakfast, though I don't remember why. She asked me "Are you breathing?" 

My mother was a trained therapist, a good diagnostician. She was a keen observer. Of course, she was right. 

I was not breathing. Or more accurately, breathing so shallowly it was almost nonexistent. And I was eating quickly. Both true. Both big deals. Both long-standing behaviors. Important to address. Air. Food. Essential for life.

My usual response when under any kind of pressure, any kind of deadline, juggling toast and cooking eggs, cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen, any time when results matter, is to shift into shallow breathing. To not make a sound. To not ruffle the waters. To become invisible. 

What might be just a passing moment of tension, a need for extra attention, gets held. I hold my breath, not just for that one instant, but for minutes, hours, afterwards. Locked in. A stranglehold. I exaggerate. Barely.

We laughed. I know better. I have accumulated many months, probably years, at meditation programs. I teach meditation. The first instruction - breathe. Just breathe. Not to still the mind. Not to develop awareness, except of breathing. Connect with this simple essential aspect of being alive. This breath. Now.

So here I was, at 70, getting a lesson in the importance of breathing, from my mother. One breath and the next. Stop. Sip the coffee. One sip. Breathe. Unwind the tension. Breathe. 

Feel it in the belly. My belly. Relax. Breathe. Relax. Breathe. Feel. Relax. Feel. Relax.

Have a spoon of cereal. One spoon. Not too full. Put the spoon down. Chew the cereal. Breathe. Sip some water. Breathe. Pick up the spoon. Have a next small bit of cereal. Or fruit. Or just appreciate the moment. Continue the conversation. Breathe.

Larry Wolf, Breathe Breathe Breathe
(2021)

I filled my journal that day with that one word, breathe, repeated over and over again. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. ... to be continued.

Ah. Ah. Ah. Let the mind settle. Stop stirring the pot. Just let it all rest. For one breath. This one breath. 

Pause gently before the next one. Feel it in my belly. Feel it in my chest. Be still. Breathe. Move. Breathe. 

Joking. Not Joking.

For the rest of that week, it became our joke. A very serious one. I can't live without breathing. None of us can.

"Are you breathing?"

"Are you pausing between bites? Put down the folk, the spoon. Breathe. What's the rush?"

What a wonderful week we had together. We went to museums and art galleries. We had meals out and meals in. We made art together. We told stories.

We breathed. We shared living. A simple miracle.