Minor White (1908-1976) was an American photographer, theoretician, critic, and educator. He combined an intense interest in how people viewed and understood photographs with a personal vision that was guided by a variety of spiritual and intellectual philosophies. White made thousands of photographs of landscapes, people, and abstract subject matter. His work exhibits technical mastery and a strong sense of light and shadow.

White was greatly influenced by Alfred Stieglitz’s concept of “equivalence,” which he interpreted as allowing photographs to represent more than their subject matter. He wrote, “when a photograph functions as an Equivalent, the photograph is at once a record of something in front of the camera and simultaneously a spontaneous symbol.”

As an educator, White taught out of his home as well as leading courses at the California School of Fine Arts, the Rochester Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other schools. He helped launch the influential photography journal, Aperture, and was its editor for many years.

— adapted from Wikipedia

This work is evidence of Minor White's portrait style and his philosophy of a "revealed" person (as seen by the photographer and simultaneously offered by the sitter - something about which he wrote). In addition his subjects in this instance are and Mary Bourdeau, both of them Canadians and photographic artists in their own right. They were visiting or studying with Minor while he was teaching at the Rochester Institute of Technology.