Fotofest
Fotofest 2024
Wendel A. White: Difficult Histories
Manifest & Red Summer
Co-Curated by Howard Bossen, Ph.D.
Rev. Dr. Colin Bossen, Ph.D.
Free and Open to the Public
On Exhibit March 1 to April 21
Monday – Thursday, 10 am – 4 pm
Saturday, 10 am – 2 pm | Sunday, 1 pm – 4 pm
JOIN US FOR THESE SPECIAL EVENTS
Opening Reception | March 1, 2024, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Arts Forum | March 17, 2024, 10:45 am – 11:15 am
Artist Lecture Red Summer: Landscape and Archive
in African American Historical Memory | March 28, 2024, 6:30 pm
(Favrot Auditorium, The Glassell School of Art)
“Wendel A. White: Difficult Histories” presents a selection from White’s Manifest (2009–present) and Red Summer (2011–2019) series.
Wendel A. White, 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. (Photo courtesy of the artist).
Manifest presents in classic still life fashion individual objects found in collections, public and private, from African American history. Some, like White’s image of a stained-glass shard of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, are connected to pivotal events. Others, such as a curtain ring in the collection of The Harriet Tubman National Historic Park, represent an object tied to daily life and a lock of Frederick Douglass’s hair that is a tangible link to the great orator and statesman.
Wendel A. White, Fort Logan, Houston, TX, Aug. 23, 1917. The Kingston Daily Freeman, Kingston, NY. Aug. 24, 1917. (Photo courtesy of the artist).
White, in his montage series Red Summer, ties the past to the present using early twentieth-century news clippings and contemporary landscapes. Made at the sites, such as Houston’s Fort Logan, where racial violence took place between 1917 and 1923, the series draws its title from civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson’s label for the summer of 1919, when white supremacist terrorism reached a fever pitch.
Wendel A. White was born in Newark, New Jersey and grew up in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. He was awarded a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York and an MFA in photography from the University of Texas at Austin. White taught photography at the School of Visual Arts, NY; The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, NY; the International Center for Photography, NY; Rochester Institute of Technology; and is currently Distinguished Professor of Art & American Studies at Stockton University
Partnered with Rice University's Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning.
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