“… history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise,
since it is to history that we owe
our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations.”
James Baldwin, Ebony magazine, August 1965
By Elin Spring
In his award-winning project, Manifest: Thirteen Colonies, Wendel A. White selected and photographed artifacts with charged historic and spiritual impact on African Americans. White and Black baby dolls from a famed social science experiment, a midcentury voting machine, a lock of Frederick Douglass’ hair, all gain resonance in White’s spare, naturally lit images. Invoking James Baldwin’s declaration that “history is present in all that we do,” White’s alluring renderings of relics discovered in archival collections from the original thirteen English colonies and Washington, D.C. encapsulate knowable and unknowable stories from the past. At once visceral and cerebral, illuminating and mystical, White’s riveting photographic narratives are on view at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology in Cambridge, MA through April 13th, 2025.
Feature Image: Baby Dolls, Kenneth and Mamie Clark, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture; Gift of Kate Clark Harris in memory of her parents Kenneth and Mamie Clark, in cooperation with the Northside Center for Child Development, Washington, D.C.
Tabletop Voting Machine, 1955. Delaware Historical Society, Wilmington, Delaware.
Hair, Frederick Douglass. Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York.
Slave Shackles. Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC.
Cabinet Cards, King & Co., c.1895. Special Collections, Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.
Wendel White’s approach to photographing relics of Black “material culture” (an anthropologic term) echoes his intense engagement with each of the articles, from their selection to his vivid photographic technique. The artifacts embody key points in American legislative decision-making and political events. Slave shackles harken to 1776, when condemnation of slavery was removed from the first draft of the Constitution. Photographic “cabinet cards” mark the short-lived opportunities of the Reconstruction period following the Civil War.
Stained Glass Shard, 16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, AL. Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture; Gift of the Family of Rev. Norman C. “Jim” Jimerson and Melva Brooks Jimerson, Washington, DC.
Mirrored Casket, Ferguson, MO. Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture; ©De Andrea Nichols, Marcis Curtis, Damon Davis, Sophie Lipman, Derek Laney, Mallory Nezam, Elizabeth Vega, Washington, DC.
A stained-glass shard recovered from the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama recollects a heartrending incident during the Civil Rights movement. More recently, an eerie mirrored casket commemorates the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri during the current Black Lives Matter movement. Both events are wrenching reminders of racial prejudice in America. And then, there are the books.
Narrative of Sojourner Truth (title page), 1850. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, John Hope Franklin Center, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
A scholar himself, White devoted a sizable number of images to expressing his high esteem for history’s erudite Black thinkers and writers. Books and manuscripts, from Phillis Wheatley’s 1773 “Memoir and Poems”, the 1850 title page of “Narrative of Sojourner Truth” (above), writings of W.E.B. DuBois and Zora Neale Hurston, along with James Baldwin’s manuscript of “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” are just a few. What distinguishes these images is the way that White uses selective focus to emphasize age through the relic’s texture and topography, directing our attention to specific areas of significance while blurring others. In these ways, he creates dimensionality so we can sense an objects’ journey across time. Our eyes are coaxed back and forth in the frame, metaphorically traveling back in history and advancing into the present.
Inkwell, James Baldwin. Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture; Gift of the Baldwin Family, Washington, DC.
White photographed each object individually, illuminated by natural light. Each appears as if suspended in infinite black space, conferring a dramatic, enchanted aura. In a technique that both equalizes and de-contextualizes, the relics on view are evenly gendered and are arranged without regard to chronological sequence or geographic location. This revisits White’s dislocated experience of discovery. He goes even further by presenting each object at the same scale, bringing objects as disparate as a coffin and an inkwell into physical alignment.
Installation view of the 25-image grid on view in Manifest: Thirteen Colonies exhibit by Wendel A. White at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge, MA. (Photo by Elin Spring, with apologies for reflections)
By arranging some images into a grid, White emphasizes visual elements like form and palette, encouraging us to find interconnections and new relationships. The way he brings things that are significant – like a portrait of Frederick Douglass – into conversation with things that are ordinary – like a pressed corsage – is a way of adding value to the ordinary. Both are fragile mementos.
Ambrotype of Frederick Douglass. Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC.
Pressed Corsage. Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina.
Just as meaningful as his background research and meticulous technique, White’s “portraits” implore us to share instinctual responses as penetrating as his own. It is no accident that we experience this installation of photographs without explanatory wall plaques. (Informational sheets are available in the gallery and his eponymous book includes enriching commentaries.) In mining the “residual power of the past to inhabit these material remains,” White queries the role that historical artifacts play in the construction of collective memory and cultural identity. His formal yet obscured photographs invite the personal interpretation of all viewers.
Genealogical Chart with Hair (A study of some Negro-white families in the United States), Caroline Bond Day, 1932. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
One of the most gratifying aspects of Manifest: Thirteen Colonies is its repercussions. White’s pensive and lyrical images advance “the idea that understanding and knowing is a salve for the pain of the narrative, and letting air and sunshine on the wound is the best way to process that healing.” His subjective, animated approach to these archives of Black material culture envisage galvanizing narratives. They leave us questioning and alter the way we perceive American history.
For more information about this exhibit, go to: https://peabody.harvard.edu/manifest-thirteen-colonies
As the 2021 Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography at the museum, White’s exhibition is accompanied by a book published by the museum in conjunction with Radius Books. For ordering information, go to: https://www.radiusbooks.org/all-books/p/wendel-a-white-manifest-thirteen-colonies
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