Clarence White took up photography in 1893 and helped start the Newark Camera Club in 1898. White was one of the photographers promoted by Alfred Stieglitz as the 'Photo-Secession', exhibiting his work in their exhibitions and publishing it in Camera Work. His pictures are characterised by his use of light, often creating a virtual glow from the highlights. He experimented widely with printing processes, including platinum and gum bichromate. White moved to New York and set up his studio in 1906, beginning to lecture at Columbia University Teachers' College the next year. He also opened a Summer School in photography in Georgetown Island, Maine in 1910, together with Gertrude Kasebier, Fred Holland Day and Max Weber, and taught at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences from 1908-21. In 1914 he established the C.H. White School of Photography, which taught many of the leading photographers of the following generation, including Margaret Bourke-White, Anton Bruehl, Laura Gilpin, Dorothea Lange, Paul Outerbridge, Ralph Steiner, Karl Struss and Doris Ulmann.