In Manifest | Thirteen Colonies, Wendel A. White invites viewers into an introspective exploration of African American legacy through meticulously framed encounters with historical artifacts. This project delves deep into the historical repositories of America’s earliest colonies, revealing poignant symbols of Black life, struggle, triumph, and cultural endurance. Through visual engagements with archives, White uncovers the buried resonance of stories often omitted from mainstream narratives.
Instead of constructing a linear storyline, Manifest | Thirteen Colonies encourages reflection and questioning. It reveals the myriad ways race, memory, and identity were constructed—and how these constructs continue to echo today. Every frame serves as a contemplative space where objects speak, history breathes, and resilience rises from silence.
Beginnings in the Archive: How a Journey Through History Took Shape
Wendel A. White’s exploration into the hidden layers of African American life began long before the Manifest | Thirteen Colonies project. His foundational interest in unveiling marginalized histories took shape in his earlier endeavor Small Towns, Black Lives, a project that spanned over a decade from 1989 to 2002. Rooted in the cultural landscapes of southern New Jersey, this work was never intended to be simply observational—it was a commitment to unearth the obscured, to listen to silenced voices, and to give material presence to Black existence in overlooked communities.
The project became a multi-dimensional tapestry of Black identity, weaving together not only personal portraits but also physical spaces—landscapes, aging schools, sacred buildings, homes, cemeteries, and cultural relics—that collectively narrated a deeper, more nuanced African American experience. These elements formed what could best be described as a visual ethnography: a living record of generational perseverance, everyday triumphs, and the architecture of resilience that shaped Black lives away from the dominant urban narratives.
An Unexpected Turn: Discovery at the University of Rochester
While Small Towns, Black Lives planted the seed for future archival inquiry, the true conceptual pivot came years later, in 2008, while White was serving as visiting faculty at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Initially, his intent was to undertake a landscape-focused study of the region, building on his longstanding interest in geography and social space. However, his research brought him to the special collections at the University of Rochester’s Rush Rhees Library, a visit that would radically redirect his creative trajectory.
Among the documents and artifacts preserved in the collection, White encountered two deeply symbolic relics: a lock of Frederick Douglass’s hair and the first book Douglass purchased after attaining his freedom from slavery. These objects—humble in form yet monumental in meaning—crystallized a new path forward. No longer just interested in the spaces where Black life unfolded, White became consumed with the tangible traces of African American history held in institutional archives. These physical remains offered not just historical data but emotional resonance and intimate access to legacies that extended far beyond traditional historical accounts.
The shift was not merely a change in subject but a reorientation of method. White began seeking out materials that carried the weight of cultural memory—artifacts that could bridge the private and public, the personal and political. This interaction with Frederick Douglass’s belongings was not just a museum experience; it was a deeply human moment of contact across time, sparking a desire to pursue similar encounters across the original thirteen colonies.
Interrogating American Memory in the Founding Colonies
As the United States neared its 250th year since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, White’s Manifest | Thirteen Colonies began to take shape as a deliberate response to this national milestone. But rather than join in simplistic celebration, White saw an opportunity for rigorous reexamination. He turned his attention to the very documents, materials, and institutions that had long shaped—and often sanitized—the historical record.
One of the foundational elements of this critical inquiry was White’s awareness of the contradictions embedded in the nation’s founding. The original draft of the Declaration of Independence included a passage that condemned slavery, but this section was ultimately removed to appease delegates from slaveholding states. This early act of historical erasure spoke volumes about the selective nature of national memory. It became a key entry point for White’s work, compelling him to search the colonial repositories for the hidden or suppressed elements of African American history.
White visited a wide array of archives—historical societies, university special collections, museum basements, and even local community libraries—across states like Massachusetts, Virginia, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and others among the original thirteen. These excursions were marked by serendipity and open-ended inquiry. He did not arrive with checklists of artifacts to photograph but instead allowed the materials themselves to reveal their significance. In each location, he found remnants that served as forensic evidence of a racialized past—school records, commemorative items, tools of labor, instruments of resistance, and objects of everyday Black life that had somehow found their way into institutional care.
Rather than portray these items as static relics, White treated them as vessels of living memory. Each object became a site of meaning, a visual and emotional portal into the realities of American history that textbooks often omit. His work illuminated not only the lived experience of Black Americans in the colonial and antebellum periods but also the mechanisms through which that experience has been archived, neglected, or misrepresented.
Reconstructing Legacy Through Tangible Memory
What distinguishes Manifest | Thirteen Colonies is its capacity to draw viewers into a deeper contemplation of the interplay between national myth and material truth. The project functions as both documentation and intervention—placing rarely seen objects in visual conversation with broader historical themes. White’s selections resist the allure of monumentality; instead, they offer quiet yet powerful affirmations of presence. From a handwritten ledger of enslaved persons to fragments of early Black educational materials, each piece acts as a rebuttal to cultural amnesia.
White’s artistic impulse was never about glorification or nostalgia. Instead, it centered on what he calls the “material remains” of Black life—the things left behind that still speak volumes. These are not objects frozen in time, but ones that continue to assert meaning in contemporary contexts. As such, they allow a reconsideration of what history is, how it is constructed, and whose voices it truly amplifies.
Crucially, this process of archival engagement also raised questions about authority, access, and interpretation. Many of the collections White explored were never intended to center Black narratives. Yet within these spaces, he was able to extract stories that complicate and challenge dominant frameworks. In doing so, he not only elevated African American memory but also disrupted the structural silences that have long dictated the boundaries of official historical discourse.
By engaging with these collections across the founding colonies, White reframed the very geography of American identity. He encouraged viewers to move beyond patriotic platitudes and toward a more profound reckoning with the nation’s origins. Through artifact, environment, and careful composition, Manifest | Thirteen Colonies becomes a meditation on the elasticity of memory—and a declaration that history, like justice, is never finished.
Finding Meaning: How Objects Choose the Story
Wendel A. White’s Manifest | Thirteen Colonies stands as a profoundly introspective body of work rooted in the nuanced act of discovery. Unlike projects that begin with concrete objectives or clearly outlined narratives, White’s approach to archival engagement is intentionally improvisational. Rather than imposing a storyline upon the materials he encountered, he allowed meaning to emerge organically. His process was driven by openness, patience, and a finely tuned sensibility to the emotional and historical charge embedded within each object.
Each archive he entered brought its own rhythm—an atmosphere shaped by the institution’s mission, its curators’ sensibilities, and the unpredictable nature of how its holdings came to exist. White did not arrive at these repositories with assumptions or checklists. Instead, he stepped into these spaces with intellectual curiosity and aesthetic awareness, ready to be surprised, provoked, or even unsettled by what he might find. This strategy transformed his work from mere documentation into an act of cultural listening—where history revealed itself not through authority, but through encounter.
Unpredictable Curation: The Archives as Organic Systems
Archives are often imagined as orderly places, where objects are meticulously classified and history is organized in neatly labeled containers. However, White quickly understood that archival collections—especially those related to African American material culture—rarely conform to such expectations. In many cases, the presence of Black historical objects in these institutions was incidental. Items were frequently acquired through donations, inheritance, or rediscovery rather than as part of an intentional effort to preserve a comprehensive record of African American life.
This disorganized curatorial history allowed for unexpected juxtapositions. A slave registry might appear next to 20th-century political leaflets, a broken child’s toy beside a document bearing the name of an enslaved woman. The archives, then, became fertile grounds for serendipity. They were fragmented, nonlinear, and reflective of the very historical marginalization they unwittingly documented. White found beauty in this lack of order—it mirrored the way real life unfolds and how memory survives: not as a continuous line, but as an accumulation of ruptures, echoes, and recoveries.
Rather than resist this irregularity, White embraced it. He understood that the archive’s contradictions could offer a more truthful, more emotionally textured understanding of the African American experience. It was precisely because these collections lacked curatorial unity that they could, in their unintentional way, reveal the layered and contested history of race in the United States.
Artifacts as Narrators: When Objects Speak Through Silence
Central to White’s process was the belief that objects themselves possess a voice. Not in the literal sense, but through their materiality, provenance, and survival. He did not seek out grand symbols or museum-centerpiece items. Instead, he was drawn to artifacts that carried emotional dissonance—those that resisted easy interpretation or demanded deeper contemplation. Sometimes, it was a tear-stained letter, other times a weathered corsage, or an improvised tool fashioned by enslaved hands. Each item, however humble, bore the imprint of lives lived under the weight of erasure and resistance.
White’s approach was guided by emotional intelligence and contextual sensitivity. He did not aim to classify the objects according to traditional academic categories, but to respond to them viscerally. What did this item demand of the viewer? What questions did it provoke? What stories might it have been prevented from telling in its original institutional context? These considerations informed every decision he made—from which items to include, to how to frame them visually, to how they would appear in relation to others.
The objects were not enlisted to support a single overarching message. Instead, they became narrative agents—each offering a shard of insight, a sliver of emotion, a fragment of memory. Together, they created a narrative constellation rather than a timeline. Through this method, White resisted the impulse to construct a cohesive, simplified portrayal of Black life in America. His intent was to preserve complexity, to hold space for contradiction, and to highlight the enduring ambiguity of historical memory.
A Tapestry of Histories: Embracing Fragmentation Over Finality
One of the most remarkable aspects of Manifest | Thirteen Colonies is its refusal to present a singular version of African American history. Instead of weaving a straightforward story from the artifacts he photographed, White embraced the tangled threads of the past. His work reveals the cacophony of narratives—some buried, some celebrated, many contested—that shape our understanding of race and identity in the United States.
The project is inherently polyphonic. Each object carries its own set of meanings, its own temporal and geographical context. Rather than subordinating these nuances to a master narrative, White allowed them to remain in tension with one another. A pair of hot combs used by generations of women to style hair shares space with a ceremonial coffin carried during a protest in Ferguson. A lock of Frederick Douglass’s hair sits in quiet proximity to a tattered schoolbook once used in a segregated classroom. These relationships are not accidental—they are carefully constructed dialogues that speak to continuity, rupture, and reinvention within African American history.
The result is a multivalent portrait that invites the viewer to consider not just the history of objects, but the history of attention. What has been preserved? What has been lost? Who decided these outcomes, and who benefits from their maintenance? In this way, White’s project becomes not only an artistic endeavor but an epistemological challenge to how we define and value historical knowledge.
His decision to embrace fragmentation over finality reflects a mature understanding of history as a living, evolving phenomenon. History, in White’s framework, is not a fixed archive to be passively consumed—it is a participatory act that demands engagement, introspection, and ethical accountability.
Through the Lens: Crafting Images with Sensitivity and Vision
Wendel A. White’s approach to visual storytelling in Manifest | Thirteen Colonies goes far beyond conventional object representation. Instead of adhering to sterile, taxonomic image-making styles typical in institutional archiving, White adopts a poetic, contemplative methodology that reveals the emotional register of each artifact. His work is rooted in atmosphere and quietude, elevating what might otherwise be treated as ephemera to the status of intimate witness. His images do not serve merely as reference but as reflection, each frame a site where meaning unfolds through nuance and restraint.
White’s artistic process eschews the flattening clarity often demanded by academic cataloging. He is not interested in exhaustive detail for its own sake but rather in the evocative power of visual suggestion. The textures of time, the erosion of memory, and the delicate interplay between visibility and concealment are all present in his tightly composed images. He allows imperfections in lighting, shallow focus, and framing asymmetry to function not as flaws, but as interpretive strategies—imbuing each object with affective depth.
His visual language intentionally embraces ambiguity. Through selective illumination, diffused shadows, and meditative stillness, White challenges viewers to move past surface impressions. The goal is not to decode the artifact but to experience it as an open-ended moment suspended between history and the present.
Ambient Light and Archival Silence: Working Within Spatial Constraints
One of the most defining elements of White’s technique is his commitment to using available light. Most of the images in Manifest | Thirteen Colonies were captured within the hushed interiors of library reading rooms, museum research spaces, or institutional archives. These environments often offer minimal control over lighting, but White transforms this limitation into a creative advantage. The subdued, indirect illumination found in these places brings an understated solemnity to the work, reflecting both the fragility of the objects and the gravity of the stories they tell.
White’s decision to refrain from artificial lighting is both aesthetic and ethical. Many of the objects he photographs are rare, aged, and vulnerable to environmental change. By refusing to introduce intrusive lighting setups, he honors the preservation protocols of each institution and ensures that his artistic practice remains in harmony with the stewardship of cultural heritage. The resulting images carry a quiet reverence—they are not loud proclamations but soft revelations.
Equally important is White’s use of a tripod—a seemingly simple device that underscores his meticulous approach. Often, special permission was required for tripod use, as many collections restrict equipment that could risk damaging materials. Yet where permitted, the tripod became a tool of precision and patience, enabling longer exposures that captured the delicate interplay of light and shadow in ways handheld shooting could not achieve. This method also underscores the contemplative nature of his practice. Every frame is the result of stillness, not speed.
Precision Through Perspective: Technical Tools as Interpretive Devices
White’s early reliance on a 4x5 view camera was central to developing the unique visual lexicon of Manifest. The camera’s ability to control perspective, depth of field, and focal plane allowed him to render objects with surgical precision—or conversely, to dissolve them into abstraction, depending on his intent. Initially, he utilized Kodak’s Quickload sheet film, a format that afforded ease of handling within restrictive archival spaces. When this film was discontinued, White adapted by mounting a digital back to his large-format camera, preserving the tactile qualities of analog technique while embracing the flexibility of digital refinement.
This hybrid approach allowed White to retain full command over compositional geometry while also accelerating workflow in environments where time with sensitive materials was often limited. The convergence of old and new technologies reflects a deeper thematic current in the project: the intersection of historical continuity and present-day interrogation. The mechanical formality of the view camera, combined with digital immediacy, echoes the dual nature of the artifacts themselves—rooted in history yet newly interpreted.
Perspective becomes more than a visual effect; it becomes a philosophical statement. By adjusting the camera’s angle or altering the focal plane, White subtly shifts the viewer’s attention, asking them to question what they see and why. Details that might be missed or dismissed—an engraved initial, a torn page corner, the faded label on a box—take on new importance. These choices underscore the selective nature of memory and documentation, challenging the assumption that history is ever truly objective.
The Metaphor of Obscurity: Representing Memory Through Partial Visibility
Perhaps the most profound aspect of White’s visual methodology lies in what he chooses not to show. Many of his compositions focus so tightly on one portion of an artifact that the rest is obscured, cropped, or rendered out of focus. Far from an accident, this obscuration is a conceptual device—a metaphor for the incomplete, fragmented way African American history has been treated in public discourse and archival record-keeping.
By denying the viewer the full scope of the object, White re-creates the experience of historical partiality. Just as many facets of Black life have been excluded or diminished in official narratives, these images resist giving the whole story in one glance. They force the viewer to sit with uncertainty, to look again, to infer, to imagine. This act of visual restraint becomes an ethical stance, emphasizing that some truths are not easily accessed, especially when systems of preservation have historically marginalized them.
These partial perspectives also evoke the emotional weight of absence. The missing context, the concealed inscription, the veiled detail—all suggest stories interrupted, lives abbreviated, legacies nearly forgotten. Yet through this method, White does not lament what is lost. Instead, he emphasizes what can be reclaimed, even from fragments. His vision demonstrates that history’s power does not lie in completeness but in its capacity to resonate, provoke, and compel action.
Archival Testimonies: Speaking Through Objects
In Manifest | Thirteen Colonies, Wendel A. White constructs a deeply layered and emotionally charged record of African American life through curated engagements with historical artifacts. These are not simply objects arranged for aesthetic contemplation—they are vestiges of lives once lived under the weight of both oppression and perseverance. They exist as tactile proof of the tensions, triumphs, and tribulations that have defined the African American experience from the colonial period through the present day.
Each object in the project serves as a vessel of memory—bridging the chasm between what has been archived and what has been overlooked. These materials do not just recount history; they challenge it. They disrupt sanitized narratives and present a more honest rendering of America’s foundations. The emotional gravity embedded in these objects underscores the magnitude of the silences that have been written into national memory.
Wendel A. White doesn’t just collect or display these remnants—he listens to them. His project renders visible a constellation of interconnected realities that includes enslavement, civil resistance, institutional neglect, and cultural resilience. In this way, the project becomes a living archive, where objects breathe and testify, not in words, but in presence.
Juxtaposing Pain and Power: Building a Temporal Continuum
One of the most striking features of Manifest | Thirteen Colonies is its emphasis on relational storytelling. Artifacts from disparate time periods are intentionally placed in visual conversation with one another, creating a cross-temporal dialogue that illuminates both historical continuity and change. For instance, a handmade casket used during the Ferguson protests to memorialize Michael Brown is juxtaposed with antebellum materials like abolitionist pamphlets, early African American educational tools, and household objects from enslaved families.
This curatorial strategy is not a matter of thematic categorization but of narrative weaving. It reveals that the struggle for equity and visibility is not confined to any single era. The trauma of racialized violence, the assertion of dignity, and the fight for liberation are threads that run unbroken through centuries of Black life in America. White's project recognizes these continuities and gives them form through carefully framed encounters with the archival residue of both violence and vitality.
Rather than offer easy contrasts, White's work thrives in the space between despair and defiance. The presence of protest relics from modern civil rights uprisings alongside colonial-era shackles and registries demonstrates that the cultural trauma embedded in these items is ongoing. These visual pairings deepen the viewer’s understanding of how history reverberates into the present—not abstractly, but tangibly, politically, and personally.
The Ledger of Lives: The Unflinching Truth of Commodification
Among the many potent artifacts documented in Manifest | Thirteen Colonies, few are as haunting or powerful as the Calvert plantation ledger. This document, maintained with chilling precision, lists the names and assigned monetary values of enslaved individuals owned by the Calvert family—revealing the raw mechanics of human commodification. The ledger's bureaucratic tone, designed to serve economic purposes, is especially jarring when held against the personal dignity of those it itemizes.
Upon encountering this ledger, White experienced a moment of profound emotional disquiet. The cold transactional nature of the language stood in brutal contrast to the human cost it represented. In a marked departure from his usual practice of selective image curation, White made the decision to return and photograph every single page of the ledger. This act was both a personal response and a public reckoning. By documenting it in full, he refused to allow this historical violence to be minimized or fragmented.
The choice to include the entire ledger in the published work was more than a gesture of completeness—it was an act of ethical clarity. Partial representation, White recognized, would only reinforce the abstraction of Black suffering. Instead, his full documentation forces viewers to confront the vast scale and institutional nature of slavery in America. The names, ages, and appraised worth of human beings are laid bare, offering irrefutable evidence of the systems that shaped—and still influence—American society.
This ledger becomes more than a record. It is a monument to endurance, a reminder that each line corresponds to a life—an individual with dreams, relationships, talents, and fears. By giving these names visibility, White transforms a document of dehumanization into an opportunity for reflection and restoration.
The Quiet Power of Objects: Witnesses to Memory
Throughout Manifest | Thirteen Colonies, White relies on objects as silent yet potent witnesses. These items, however unassuming, are saturated with significance. From a pressed corsage once pinned to a young girl's dress to an ink-stained desk used in segregated classrooms, each artifact tells its own version of history—one not filtered through official accounts but retained in the textures, wear, and remnants of lived experience.
What unites these objects is not their aesthetic quality but their narrative integrity. They do not perform history; they preserve it. Their physical presence suggests survival against erasure, and their inclusion in this project reflects White's belief in the power of material culture to speak across time. These objects resist commodification even as they recall it. They stand not as decorative artifacts but as emotional and historical interlocutors.
Their quiet power lies in their authenticity. These are not reconstructions or imagined props—they are real, scarred, and often incomplete. Yet it is precisely this incompleteness that gives them weight. In their worn edges and faded inscriptions, we sense the burden of memory and the persistence of meaning.
White’s work urges viewers to pause, to acknowledge, and to listen—not just to what is displayed, but to what is implied. Each object is a prompt to ask deeper questions: Who held this? What did it witness? Why was it kept? These questions foster a form of engagement that moves beyond observation into ethical participation in the act of remembrance.
Evolving Insights: A Personal Journey Through Collective Memory
White’s artistic evolution has always been rooted in personal reflection. Beginning as a teenager taking portraits at family reunions, he developed a visual language that celebrates communal memory while interrogating national narratives. Rather than isolate his various series, he views all his work as interconnected chapters of a single, expansive journey examining Black life in America.
He draws inspiration from the concept of parallax—a term that describes how the position of the observer affects what is seen. Just as objects appear differently depending on one's vantage point, so too does history. Our understanding of the past is contingent upon where we stand socially, culturally, and temporally. White embraces this multiplicity and rejects totalizing claims. If he were to begin Manifest again today, he acknowledges that his choices would differ, not out of regret, but due to the natural evolution of his insight.
Surprises Along the Way: Encounters That Resonate
Throughout his work, discovery remains central. Unexpected artifacts, unanticipated visual effects, and the serendipity of archival encounters are all crucial elements of White’s process. These moments offer revelation—not only about the materials but about the medium itself.
A particularly illuminating moment occurred while photographing a daguerreotype of an African boy from the Peabody collection. Placing the image under the light, White noticed that a nearby fixture created a spectral reflection across the surface—visually evoking the duality of the daguerreotype’s negative-positive form. Rather than correct or avoid this effect, he embraced it as a metaphor for visibility, absence, and perception within the historical record.
These encounters underscore White’s belief in the agency of the object. Each photograph is a collaborative act between artist, artifact, and environment. The results, layered with intention and accident, invite viewers to slow down, observe deeply, and listen closely.
Reimagining Education: Engaging the Archive Creatively
Manifest | Thirteen Colonies holds immense pedagogical value. It presents an alternative model for engaging with historical material—one that prioritizes artistic interpretation and emotional resonance alongside academic rigor. White hopes that the work will encourage educators, curators, and students to treat archives not as static depositories but as active spaces of dialogue, imagination, and reinterpretation.
The publication accompanying the project includes essays by leading scholars such as Ilisa Barbash, Cheryl Finley, Leigh Raiford, Brenda Dione Tindal, and Deborah Willis. Their contributions deepen the conversation, exploring the intersections of race, history, art, and archival practice. These essays position White’s work not only as an aesthetic undertaking but as a platform for critical discourse and intellectual engagement.
By inviting viewers to see familiar materials in unfamiliar ways, the project redefines how African American history can be taught, studied, and understood.
Looking Ahead: What’s Next for the Manifest Series
White remains committed to expanding the Manifest series. His ambition is to explore archival collections in other regions of the United States, uncovering new stories and perspectives that continue the dialogue initiated in Thirteen Colonies. Though he has other conceptual projects in early stages, he embraces the organic nature of artistic inquiry. As history unfolds, so too will the direction of his work.
The evolving nature of the Manifest project reflects White’s belief in continuous inquiry. What began as an archival offshoot of a landscape project has grown into a transformative exploration of memory and identity. And like history itself, it remains unfinished, always beckoning new questions.
Final Thoughts:
Manifest | Thirteen Colonies is more than an artistic undertaking—it is an act of cultural reclamation. Wendel A. White has created a deeply moving and multilayered work that challenges conventional understandings of American history, reshaping how we engage with the past and reframe our future. Through his sensitive and deliberate practice, White constructs a visual archive that brings dignity, depth, and complexity to narratives long marginalized or erased. The artifacts he photographs—ranging from daguerreotypes to protest remnants, from enslaved registries to personal heirlooms—are not mere historical relics; they are living testaments to human resilience and historical consequence.
White’s work compels us to consider the power of presence, even in absence. Many of the objects he features carry with them the ghostly silence of those who once owned, touched, or were defined by them. A rusted shackle, a cracked glass jar, a handwritten ledger—each item pulses with emotional and historical gravity, forcing the viewer to reckon with the personal impact of collective trauma and triumph. These images stand as quiet monuments to lives lived in the shadows of injustice, yet illuminated here with reverence and precision.
What makes Manifest | Thirteen Colonies especially profound is its refusal to simplify. Rather than offering a neatly packaged narrative, White embraces history’s contradictions and its discomforts. He leaves space for questions, ambiguity, and wonder. The power of his work lies not only in what it shows, but in what it invites the viewer to feel, ponder, and investigate further.
As we move forward into new commemorations, anniversaries, and historical reckonings, projects like this are essential. They provide a lens not only to the past but to the ongoing construction of identity, culture, and truth. Wendel A. White reminds us that history is not static—it lives in objects, in memory, in resistance, and in art. Through Manifest, he offers a way of seeing that listens, that heals, and that dares to document a legacy in full dimension. In doing so, he ensures that the fragments of African American history are not only remembered but honored, reinterpreted, and eternally visible.
