The Alumni Association of the Clarence H. White School in New York voted in 1915 to have each graduating student submit three drymounted, signed prints to constitute a commemorative album as a tribute to White as a teacher. This idea seems not to have been followed over the course of the winter and summer school sessions, with some students opting out, submitting fewer than three prints, mounting them in different ways, and not signing them.
The Princeton University Art Museum holds five albums that show work completed under White’s direction. The earliest from the summer of 1915 shows pictures only taken in Maine. The 1916 album encompasses graduates from the New York school and the newly established East Canaan summer school, thus mixing urban and rural scenes. In 1917, only the New York school seems to be represented, and most of the subjects can be located in the city. The following year, the album was labeled 1917-18 and included both winter and summer session students from White’s new installation in Canaan, CN. No albums from 1919 to 1924 survive; the last album for the class of 1925 would have been made for White shortly before he left for Mexico in late June 1925.
The works normally reflect class assignments, often dealing with problems of printing using various processes or shooting under specific lighting or exposure conditions. Most White students had had some prior experience with photography and some enrolled in classes over several years, but in a few cases the prints represent what was learned during a six-week summer session. Therefore, the albums provide valuable insights into the sophisticated level of compositional and technical mastery that these adult students achieved with a year or less of instruction.
All process identifications here are tentative, since the works have not been scientifically examined.