Manifest: Thirteen Colonies is a photographic project and journey through the repositories of African-American material culture found in libraries, museums, and archives of the original thirteen English colonies. Conceived by photographer Wendel White, this project is a personal, selective reliquary of the remarkable evidence of Black agency and racial oppression stored in public and private collections. In this program, White discusses his approach to finding, selecting, and photographing artifacts—from rare singular objects, to more quotidian materials—and highlights their significance as forensic evidence of Black life and history in the United States. A conversation with public historian Brenda Tindal follows.
Wendel White, Distinguished Professor of Art & American Studies, Stockton University; 2021 Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography, Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, Harvard University in conversation with Brenda Tindal, Executive Director, Harvard Museums of Science & Culture
This program is supported by the Robert Gardner Fellowship Fund
About the Speaker
Wendel White has taught photography at the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY; The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, NY; the International Center for Photography, New York, NY; Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY; and is currently Distinguished Professor of Art & American Studies at Stockton University, Galloway, NJ. White is the fourteenth recipient of the Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography, Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnography, Harvard University. He has received other awards and fellowships including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography, three artist fellowships from the New Jersey State Council for the Arts, a Bunn Lectureship in Photography and grants from Center, Santa Fe, NM (Juror’s Choice), the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and a New Works Photography Fellowship from En Foco, New York, NY. His work is represented in museum and corporate collections including Duke University; the New Jersey State Museum; California Institute for Integral Studies; The Graham Foundation for the Advancement of the Fine Arts, Chicago, IL; En Foco, New York, NY; Rochester Institute of Technology; The Museum of Fine Art, Houston; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; Haverford College, Haverford, PA; University of Delaware; University of Alabama; and the New York Public Library Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY. White has served on the board of directors for the Society for Photographic Education including three years as board chair. He has also served on the Kodak Educational Advisory Council, NJ; Save Outdoor Sculpture, the Atlantic City Historical Museum, and the New Jersey Black Culture and Heritage Foundation. White was a board member, including three years as board chair, of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. Recent projects include; Red Summer; Manifest; Schools for the Colored; Village of Peace: An African American Community in Israel; Small Towns, Black Lives; and others.
Recorded April 7, 2022
Transcript
Manifest: Thirteen Colonies Lecture & Conversation
[00:00:08.82] Good evening. My name is Ilisa Barbash. I'm the curator of visual anthropology at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology located on the traditional territory of the Massachusett people. I'm very delighted to welcome you all to Manifest 13 Colonies, a lecture and conversation about a very special photographic project. This event is presented by the Peabody Museum in collaboration with the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. It is made possible by the Robert Gardner fellowship in photography, which is annually awarded by the Peabody Museum and funds an established practitioner of the photographic arts to create and subsequently publish through the Peabody Museum, a major book of photographs on the human condition anywhere in the world.
[00:01:01.92] Among the previous Fellows are Dayanita Singh, Yto Barrada, Deborah Luster, Guy Tillim, and Sami Baloji. Robert Gardner, 1925 to 2014, had a long and fruitful relationship with Harvard and the Peabody Museum. And he was cofounder of Harvard's Film Study Center. He was a brilliant and influential ethnographic filmmaker. Among his works are Dead Birds Made in New Guinea in 1963 and Forest of Bliss Made in India in 1980-- 1986. He was also the author of many books, some of which were published by the Peabody Museum Press.
[00:01:44.50] Wendel White is the 14th recipient of the Robert Gardner fellowship in photography. He has taught at the School of Visual Arts the International Center for Photography Rochester Institute of Technology. And he is currently distinguished professor of art and American studies at Stockton University. He is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship in photography as well as having artist fellowships from the New Jersey State Council for the Arts and other awards. His work is represented in many museums and corporate collections including Duke University, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the New York Public Library Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture New York.
[00:02:30.99] Wendel White describes himself as delving into archives, museums, and libraries in order to, and I quote, excavate Black history through material culture. He photographs diaries, documents, musical, instruments, tape, recorders, doors, hair, photographs, souvenirs, and other artifacts. White says that the ability of objects to transcend lives, centuries, and millennia suggests a remarkable mechanism for folding time, bringing the past and the present into a shared space that is uniquely suited to artistic exploration.
[00:03:09.51] These artifacts are the forensic evidence of Black life-- life and events in the United States. Wendell's photographs, he says, are a response to the collective physical remnants of the American concept and representation of race. Tonight, Wendel White will share some of his recent work. And then he will engage in a conversation with Brenda Tindal, public historian and executive director of the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture.
[00:03:40.03] We also welcome your participation. So will you please use the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen to submit questions or comments any time during the program? Our speakers will address as many questions as time allows at the end of the presentation. It is now my great pleasure to welcome Wendel White to the Zoom stage. Thank you.
[00:04:06.28] Thank you, Lisa, thank you very much for that generous introduction. And before I begin sharing work and talking about my work, I want to say how much I appreciate the support of the Peabody-- Peabody Museum and everyone there, all of the efforts, especially on the part of Lisa to get me onboarded for the fellowship and everything. And so, it's really been quite a pleasure to be working with the Peabody. And I'm looking forward to my conversation with Dr. Tindal. We have had previous conversations. And I'm looking forward to continuing that for the audience.
[00:04:47.45] So, as you've heard already, the title of this presentation is Manifest 13 Colonies. And it is primarily concerned with African-American material culture in the archive, in the various-- in various forms libraries, museums, historical societies, and in private collections as well. This project, and I just in particular want to talk a little bit about its origins as well as the scope of the project. And the project, by the way, the 13 Colonies, hopefully, is evident in terms of thinking about the geographic scope of the project. I am including specifically work from collections and archives in what were the 13 original English colonies as part of this particular project. For a long time this project has been tied to geography. And I've-- and I've decided to continue that relationship between geography and the landscape with the still life objects-- the still life photographs that I'm making in these various collections.
[00:05:58.21] This book-- this photograph of this book is the first book that was purchased after becoming free of slavery by Frederick Douglass. It's in the special collection at the University of Rochester. And in addition to this, this image is the a lock of Frederick Douglass hair also in that special collection.
[00:06:21.98] These are the first two photographs that I made as part of what eventually became a series of projects related to the manifest theme in terms of building a collection and building an archive and building a reliquary, in a sense, of these different objects related to different parts of the country and the geography of the place of African-Americans and the American landscape. And as I've worked on other projects that were more specifically connected in that way, this one ties this a little bit more specifically to the way in which these projects come together.
[00:07:01.36] This is a-- and one of many documents that I have photographed. It's a bill of sale for a slave. It's from the collection at Duke University. And I started with this because I wanted to also tie the work that I've been doing to the way in which all of this has emerged. For me, it emerged as a type of artistic, intellectual inquiry, but with an emphasis on a relationship to the humanities and a relationship to humanities ideas.
[00:07:40.11] I have been often spoken of the fact that my current academic position at Stockton University has been one that really broadened my involvement with the humanities in various ways through my colleagues and through various programs at the institution. Along the way, I also wound up serving on the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, which I was very excited to do. And many conversations with people involved in that organization have shaped a lot of the ideas over several decades that have had an impact on this work.
[00:08:19.69] Very recently though, I was struck by two paragraphs in Isabel Wilkerson's book Caste about America and the way it connects to the work that I've been doing. And I'm always looking for these connections. America is an old house. We can never declare the work over. Wind, flood, drought, and human upheavals batter a structure that is already fighting whatever flaws were left unattended in the original foundation. When you live in an old house, you may not want to go into the basement after a storm to see what the rains have wrought. Choose not to look, however, at your own peril. The owner of an old house knows that whatever you are ignoring will never go away. Whatever is lurking will fester whether you choose to look or not. Ignorance is no protection from the consequences of inaction.
[00:09:18.70] And ideas like this and others have been very much at the center of my motivation and how I have been tying work together that is both-- work that is about tremendous pain and terror that has occurred to the African-American communities in this country for a long period of time, but then, also a transcendent-- transcendence, which has taken place within the community, a sense of agency, and a sense of accomplishment in spite of obstacles placed in the way.
[00:09:55.66] This was something that opened up a set of ideas for me that was very important. It's almost impossible to tell in this context what this document is. But it follows the bill of sale in a way that's perfectly natural in a way that had never thought of, which is that it is an insurance policy on the slave that was purchased. This idea of property is never more prevalent than the notion that somebody who has a business will insure their property in that regard. And this is an insurance policy for the slave based on a cost that was paid and that would be paid out.
[00:10:39.67] What I also found interesting about this and which has been part of the work that I've been doing in general is the way this transcends North and South. So while this document sits at the Duke University collection in the Rubenstein Library, it refers to an insurance policy for-- from a Connecticut insurance company. So everybody was involved in this process.
[00:11:08.25] And I come across these images. This is a book of-- kind of a memento book of photographs of well known people. It comes from the [? Kraft ?] family in South Carolina. This is an image of Frederick Douglass. And as you can see, the photographs that I make include and exclude parts of the information. None of these photographs are intended to be illustrations of the objects. They're really intended to be representations of the experience that I've encountered as I move from one collection to another.
[00:11:46.68] I-- it would take up all of the time that I have today. And I will probably run out of time anyway to go into the individual details. This is now I'm at the Library of Virginia. And this is another book that was in the collection at Duke University, kind of. And so, these are going back and forth. They're not organized around a collection. And gradually, you'll see they're organized a little bit around some ideas and themes that emerge. The challenge has been for me that so many different ideas emerge as I encounter the materials that I look at. And I don't have a particular limit on the types of materials that I look at. And I am looking at whatever I can gain access to from the earliest arrival of Africans in North America as part of the process of enslavement, all the way to the current moment. And so, some of the images that I have photographed are very contemporary in terms of their production. Obviously, many museums and collections and libraries have to catch up with contemporary events in terms of gaining access to and collecting those objects.
[00:13:09.13] This is for me, particularly interesting because it also marks a representation of an early moment in this process. And this is a recent photograph that I made. It's a autographed page of Albion Tourgée. And the whole story of Albion Tourgée was one that was really quite potent early in this process and really had a lot to do with sort of driving the way in which this project has unfolded over time. I actually was upstate New York, working on some photographs in different collections and Elliott, who is a scholar. He was in North Carolina. I think he may still be in North Carolina, was visiting with his new book and giving a book talk about his book "Colorblind Justice."
[00:14:02.36] And I thought I would read a portion of it because it is a book that has had a tremendous impact for me. In the spring of 1902 a package arrived at the United States consulate in Bordeaux, France containing a complimentary copy of the Leopard's spots, "A Romance of the White Man's Burden" by Thomas Dixon Jr. Walter Hines Page, the prominent publisher who had personally arranged for the publication of the Leopard's Spots at Doubleday Page and Company probably sent the volume, believing that the American consul in Bordeaux would find the subject matter of great interest.
[00:14:38.47] If so Page, was not alone in this assumption. More copies of Dixon's first novel were sent to Albion Tourgée by friends and foes alike. Responding in a 38 page typewritten letter composed in short stints over several weeks he gave full expression to his feelings. The extraordinary letter reveals the depths of Tourgée's ideological distance from both Dixon, the southern extremist, and from Northern liberals.
[00:15:09.71] And then, this is not "The Leopard Spots". It's a cover-- it's "The Clansman", the Thomas Dixon book that becomes birth-- that inspires "Birth of a Nation". This long letter gave-- and then the text continues, in "Colorblind Justice", this long letter gave Tourgée an opportunity to reflect upon the crusade for social justice to which he had devoted his career. By 1902, he had become a voice from the political wilderness. And no one knew it better than himself.
[00:15:42.35] He had once believed that the Civil War had set the country upon a course of humanitarian enlightenment and moral progress. Recalling the idealism of his war days, he remembered his joy at the mere call to over-- to the overthrow of slavery, which had removed that stain of injustice and oppression on his country. And emancipation, he had believed, had made the United States truly the flower of liberty, security, and equal rights for all. But somehow, the true spirit of the crusade against slavery had been afterwards forgotten. We had made the name of slavery an anathema, he told Johnson. But we have sanctified its most degrading and debasing element, the subjugation of one race to another.
[00:16:28.66] And it's all of these ideas sort of swirling around that I find to be remarkable. I know probably most of you are familiar. But I will just make the additional note that Albion Tourgée was the losing attorney in Plessy v Ferguson, which then ushered in, this is why he's in the political wilderness, it then ushers in the Jim Crow era.
[00:16:51.12] This is a voting box in North Carolina. And some objects, and as we've looked at a couple right now, may not have come directly in contact with African-Americans or created by African-Americans. But they all evoked the narratives that have been central to our lives for all the time that we have been in the United States and the complexity of what it means to be an American in this country, the definition of that, how that definition unfolds. This is a wonderful piece of pottery from an archeological dig in Long Island, being done by the Department of anthropology at Montclair University.
[00:17:36.48] This is an image I actually posted fairly recently. It's an eel spear, gig, I guess it's called. That is used for fishing-- or fishing for eel. And Chris Matthews, who is the acting chair of the department there, was one invited me to be able to photograph some of this active archeological work that they were doing in Setauket, Long Island, and in our conversations he brought up this painting by William Sidney Mount, which I thought I would just share, which is "Eel Spearing at Setauket". So this is a painting depicting the landscape and the process of eel spearing, including the presence of an African-American woman in that process of fishing at actually the Sound in-- near at Setauket in Long Island, New York. So this is a remarkable object that then connects to this historical painting in a remarkable way.
[00:18:45.06] This one was an object photograph, again, connected to fishing. And so, there are all of these different threads that I encounter and try, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to weave into the narrative. And so, this is a basket from in Georgia of-- for carrying fish after, you know, catching fish. So the catch would go into there. And it's hand-woven.
[00:19:14.85] We started at the beginning with a lock of Frederick Douglass's hair. Hair has been something I don't have a lot of them in today's slide presentation. But it's something that I have been continually interested in. This is at North Carolina Museum of History. This was from a private collection of, my friend actually, Vicki Gold Levi. And it comes from a beauty product line that was produced in Atlantic City, New Jersey, not too far from where I live. And I believe these objects have gone on to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. And this is another one of the apex products from Atlantic City.
[00:19:58.77] Again, hair related products, here is a Brogan, handmade Brogan that was in the collection in North Carolina. And so, these ordinary quotidian kinds of objects, handmade clothing, are essential to the broader story. So we see some remarkable objects, the documentation of humans owning other humans, and then the ordinary everyday objects. And it's that meshing together of all of these different ways of thinking about race, thinking about the American definition of race, the American definition of the absorption into the American nation, into the ideal, so to speak, that is played out.
[00:20:55.70] James Baldwin's inkwell. Blind Tom-- Thomas Whaley? Thomas Whaley, I think this is in the National Museum flute in National Museum of African-American History and Culture Musical instruments. This is probably, today, I think maybe the most contemporary thing that I'm showing. And this is a door from Katrina.
[00:21:29.53] Malcolm X's tape recorder from the mosque, number 7. And this is a broken glass. It was part of several photographs that I made of objects that were removed from what had been Paul Robeson's house in Princeton as part of their process of renovating that and trying to create a center there for Paul Robeson. These are some-- and there are really, ordinary, everyday objects, a pouch that held smoking tobacco.
[00:22:05.54] This is from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, which is-- I got a chance to spend a couple of days there, and really a remarkable collection of material related to, not only the Stowe family and Harriet Beecher Stowe, but to specifically, the Uncle Tom narrative. I believe, if I remember it correctly, they have some 2000 unique editions of Uncle Tom's Cabin, along with a range of other publications related to it. And in this particular case, objects related to Uncle Tom's Cabin, these are Staffordshire or Staffordshire-like ceramics of Tom.
[00:22:50.93] This is on in the scientific end. This is from the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. This is a piece of intestines that was used to determine one of the first strains of cholera. This particular specimen has been written about. It came from a man of African descent in 1849 in Philadelphia.
[00:23:19.18] So these are objects in the collection. To my recollection, they don't have much of a provenance about this. Many of the objects in their collection were provided as teaching material by various faculty. And so, they were just placed and then removed from time to time for teaching purposes before it became more formalized as a museum in that regard. And this is-- and there's no indication that this bone is connected to an African-American. But it is a bone that was removed as a result of a wound during the Civil War. So it connects to that narrative in the largest possible way.
[00:24:07.09] Running out of time.
[00:24:10.92] I love these offset plates. They're in the PhD library the Harvard archives. These are wonderful representations. This is no longer at Harvard. This is in Charleston. This is back at Harvard. And it's a long conversation. So we'll get back to that.
[00:24:39.49] But this is one of my favorite things and one of the things that Lisa mentioned to me early on that she thought I might be interested in. And Carolyn Bondi's dissertation-- thesis about race and the mixing of race between African-American and whites, so all most of these people, and then using hair as a specimen in within that regard. So that's, I think, a presentation in and of itself.
[00:25:12.09] Portraits from Asbury, New Jersey, a silhouette at the Stowe Center in Hartford, go quickly, some of this is self-evident. I wanted to then also quickly include a couple of more places. This is another early-- this is-- that's Lena Horne. This is another early-- and this is that's at Virginia Union University-- piece that was quite influential for me, it came from a catalog by Coco Fusco and Brian Wallis and an exhibition-- for an exhibition at the Whitney Museum, entitled Only Skin Deep. And this little passage near the very end of their essay, nonetheless, race remains with us as a very compelling myth. It is part of our American heritage. It has been one of the most important and powerful means of determining who is and who is not considered American. Photography has been the most effective form of image making for both supporting and debunking-- debunking the myth of race.
[00:26:35.29] And I'll, sort of, skip a couple of pieces here that I had wanted to write about. This-- and just so that I can talk for a minute about this these last pieces. These are just a few of the cases in which the Zealy daguerreotypes, the photographs made of enslaved people during slavery. And that's also one of the things that's specific. And they were commissioned.
[00:27:05.74] And so, all of them are-- and there are a number-- there's a wonderful new book in which the Peabody collaborated with Deborah Willis and others to write about this work as well as other forms of representation of African-Americans. I, and of course, Carrie Mae Weems, made a series of really well known images of these daguerreotypes.
[00:27:35.71] And I just wanted there we go I just wanted to, in a sense, look at them as objects and close them off. I didn't want to see them again in terms of their faces. It's one way, I mean, I often look very directly at painful content. But this was one way that I could look at some painful content and find a way to provide some comfort in recognizing the pain that's involved.
[00:28:10.96] So at this point, I'd like to invite Brenda Tindal to come and join a conversation with me. Thank-- and welcome.
[00:28:22.41] Wonderful, wow, Wendel. I am just impressed, as usual, with your work and with your ability to articulate your vision for the artifacts and the material culture that make up Manifest 13 Colonies. It's interesting because a few years ago I was a project archivist on the Alice Walker collection at Emory University. And while I was working on that collection, I ran across a sticky note written in her long hand. And that sticky note read, people are known by the records they keep. If it isn't in the record, it will be said that it did not happen. That is what history is, a keeping of records.
[00:29:19.98] And that kept, sort of, coming to the surface as I was sitting at your feet during this presentation. And It has certainly been a guidepost in many ways for my own thinking as a historian and as a steward of, sort of, diverse, biocultural collections. And so, I leverage that, sort of, encounter if you will in Alice Walker's collection to begin our conversation.
[00:29:51.30] I'm wondering, in your opinion, what is the utility of keeping records? You know, what influenced your decision in many ways to document Black life and culture as it found expression in private collections archives and repositories throughout the United States?
[00:30:14.31] Absolutely, and thank you so much for those kind words. And I know that we have also discussed the possibility of sharing some more images with folks. And so, I'm going to just start that. I think that's really a critical piece of this process, because it is, as one of the important inspiring responses to my work that I skipped over for time, is one from the scholar Leigh Raiford, in which she talks about the way in which memory has not-- the historical record has not been in place for African-Americans in the way that it has been in place for the broader American population.
[00:31:05.51] And so, what we have passed on in memory has not often existed in the collections, has not often existed in the archives. And it's been an interesting part of what has been, I would say, a complex journey as I have traveled through different collections and different archives. And I have to say, almost universally, I have had great access and-- to material in the collections. I think though that the-- often sometimes the access that I've had has been based on the fact that the objects themselves haven't often been considered particularly rare, have not been considered particularly important.
[00:31:52.34] And not that I'm not trustworthy, I am. But it is also the type of thing that I would have expected greater obstacles to access early material. And so, for instance, my first experience which was to just sort of have placed on the table in front of me a lock of Frederick Douglass's hair and the first book that he purchased after he became free of slavery, which in particular, is inscribed by Douglass to his son with that story. So it feels very much like a very, particularly, authentic piece, just was, to me remarkable. I felt like the level of access that I was connecting to history was remarkable for me. And that's what's kept me. I mean, every day is trying to recreate that experience.
[00:32:46.67] [LAUGHTER]
[00:32:50.85] Thinking you know, so often, it's really-- particularly in museums, because things are on display, there is a focus on sort of the iconicity of a collection or an object. And I did wonder, how did you balance, sort of, what could be understood as that quotidian, sort of, the pedestrian contours of Black life and culture with ones that maybe expressed a bit more iconicity? How did you make those decisions? How did you determine what would, you know, ultimately become part of this collection?
[00:33:29.28] Right, so that's what really distinguishes what-- my work from that of a real historian--
[00:33:35.78] [LAUGHTER]
[00:33:36.78] --of a historian in the sense that I'm really looking for a range of experiences that become the sum total of the object. And I'm looking for the degree to which there might be a certain amount of rarity. But it also might be the most common thing that I could find in every collection all over the country. But I'm also working as a visual artist. So I'm looking for the way in which the object resonates for me visually and how I might handle it then.
[00:34:08.32] The number of things that impact on that are tremendous. The environment where it's located, even though every object is placed on black velvet, the environment, the room that it's in has an impact on the appearance of the object, what it looks like. A range of different things play out. And of course, what has happened to it in history, how it has survived its journey to that moment, so a jump rope in one collection is going to look very different than a jump rope in another collection. And one may be evocative of a whole range of different things that the other one just doesn't seem to connect.
[00:34:53.17] And it's the point that I work on in terms of communicating with archivists, librarians, curators, et cetera, whoever the gatekeepers may be for collections, when, you know, they're asking me, well, in addition to, sort of, finding things in the finding aid and wanting to have a collaborative conversation and also planning for my visit, you know, what are you looking for? And it's a very hard question for me to answer. Because it's not an illustration, because it's not purely about the historical narrative that's attached to that particular object, because it's also about the visual, I often don't know until I'm sitting in front of the object. And I often even then don't know until I've made a photograph and begun to think about how it might look or how it might appear in a photograph.
[00:35:50.89] I've often been surprised by things that didn't seem exciting to me at the moment that I was sitting there. And then, the photograph, you know, came alive. It was wonderful. And other times, I thought oh, this is going to be the greatest, you know, photograph that I've ever made. And it winds up, you know, pushed to the side because it just didn't connect in various terms visually.
[00:36:13.67] So I really often have-- I refer to the work that the photographing is the research. Right, so I don't-- it's not that the photograph is an illustration for the research, it is the photograph-- photograph is the research. Although, I make photographs as the outcome of gathering ideas, gathering ideas from a broad range of the humanities, which hopefully tried to touch upon in terms of referencing some of the literature that has been a touchstone for me, I'll say.
[00:36:47.05] Absolutely, it's so interesting because so often, the story, the narrative of African-Americans can often be seen through this very monolithic lens. And on top of that, there is this tendency to chart African-American experiences through a very narrow corridor, from slavery to segregation to civil rights. And I'm wondering if the lens through which you've used, both photography and archives, challenge this narrow articulation of black experiences?
[00:37:26.80] Absolutely, absolutely, I mean, obviously you know, there's an entire life of Africans that are free people of color in the United States, even in the South in the antebellum period of time, going back very early in the history of the United States. And so, it is important to recognize that. It's also important to recognize all the other remarkably complex ways in which we have dealt with the constraints placed upon us.
[00:37:59.23] So I mean, I just have an exhibition up now of work that I've done on the remains of what were segregated schools in the North. And we had an event. And I met some folks. And one of the things in this particular area was that there was a school, Black school that was created by the Black community, not because their children were excluded from the predominant school system that was mostly white, but because they were interested in creating a job for a Black teacher.
[00:38:33.11] And there wasn't a job for a Black teacher at the white school. So the students weren't being excluded. So this is another way in which there's a tremendous amount of Black agency. It's not just that every colored school, so to speak, was the result of the dominant society excluding Black students from the better schools. It's-- there were other kinds of stories.
[00:38:59.04] And I started that project because I came across what was a white school in a Black town because there was a small population, white population in this white-- in this Black town. And segregation required that the Black town build and hire a white teacher for these white students. And so, then I thought, well, isn't this another remarkably complicated way in which we're thinking about race?
[00:39:25.48] I mean, you know, it really was very much an apartheid moment. But at the same time, the Black school was the better school. You know, the white students were in this one room schoolhouse. And so, it was also that irony of like, no, I'll just take the terrible school over here, as long as I don't have to sit in the same classroom with Black students. Schools segregated by classrooms, you know, there's-- Black classroom is downstairs. The white classroom is upstairs. That was enough to satisfy that idea.
[00:39:56.77] And then, of course, all the other things that I've encountered, the businesses, I just spent a good amount of time photographing cemetery books from the civic organizations, Black civic organizations that were formed to make sure that everybody in the community got a proper burial. And the recordkeeping, the detailed recordkeeping that was being done in that process of taking care of everybody in the community. So there are just remarkable things.
[00:40:31.26] And it goes back to what you were saying earlier around, sort of, charting Black life and culture through a more nuanced lens, not just thinking about the pain and the horror, but also the ingenuity and the agency and the entrepreneurial spirit and a sense of community building and institution building that finds expression in the material culture.
[00:41:01.35] Yeah.
[00:41:02.07] I think what's-- oh, yes, go ahead.
[00:41:04.90] I was just was very quickly going to say, it helps me go to collections all the time, knowing that I'm not going to only see painful stuff all day, right? Because at the end of the day, a day of painful material is exhausting. I mean-- I mean in a way that just, I've had it. But the possibility for all of these wonderful things, coming across material from Paul Robeson or somebody, you know, all this other stuff is just great. It helps lift me up.
[00:41:37.06] I was thinking about something that scholar Leigh Raiford said about Manifest. And she wrote, Wendel White makes historical objects intimate and singular. And I couldn't help but see that-- in-- it came into such sharp, sharp, sharp expression in the context of the portfolio here. And I'm wondering, in some ways, you know, how there's a singularity, and yet, we might understand these objects as being quite prismatic.
[00:42:12.10] And so, I think, for instance, of the Clark dolls.
[00:42:17.68] Yes.
[00:42:18.49] Now, one might understand those as simply children as play, right? And at the same time, it defined and was critical to-- this critical moment, this watershed moment in American, not just Black history, but American history with Brown v Board of Education. And so, this uncanny ability to use your lens, your photographs as a way to pull people in, to make Black life and culture intimate, and yet, it be so prismatic, is so interesting. What stories do these individual and yet collectivities tell us? What stories do they tell us?
[00:43:06.55] Right, I mean, I think that-- first, and I mean, as we were already starting to touch on this idea of the way in which race has been throughout the history of this country and outside this country, but certainly within this country, which is where my concerns have been, a remarkably complex and difficult process that unfolds. And it-- but-- but what's remarkable about it is that it never seems to quite go the way things are planned. You know, it seems as though these plans have been laid. And it always is more nuanced than the simple notion that there is a continuum of starting-- things start out bad. And then they get better.
[00:44:10.70] [LAUGHTER]
[00:44:12.47] That's the nicer story that we would like to that we would like to tell. But the fact of the matter is that early in the history of this country there were people that had a tremendous amount of agency. And today, there are tremendous number of people that don't have any agency at all, all based on the construction around race, around appearance.
[00:44:36.60] And this is-- goes back to-- I have to go back to Wilkerson and her idea of caste, which is that this was the remarkably powerful thing that was different about race, about caste in America, is that it was race based as opposed to simply like, oh, you were born to this family. Or you come from this tribe over here, ore you are in this situation. In the United States, caste, where you sit in the hierarchy, is based on how you look. And that in and of itself is the most insidious part of it.
[00:45:15.65] And that's the thing that I'm always sort of pulling at as I'm finding things, as I'm looking at things, is to try and see how all of that has played out over time. The stories are, as I indicated, are there. And they're complicated. But it's also that I have a deep affection for these material culture items. I'm just very much drawn to the idea that some of these things have survived, whatever, where-- whatever they may be.
[00:45:50.98] And I'm especially struck by the, like, very small fragments of things that are held onto by Black families that wind up in collections at various times, like photograph-- they're not part of this group of photographs because they're outside the 13 colonies. But there's a whole sewing box at the Nebraska State Historical Society called the Douglas sewing box.
[00:46:19.61] And the-- it comes from a family whose matriarch had-- whose matriarch had been a runaway slave and had lived in the Frederick Douglass household. He and his wife helped raise her. She winds up married out. And she brings all these mementos. There's lock-- more locks of Douglass' hair, but also the children and all the members of the family. There are all kinds of other mementos inside this box that she's held on to and then pass down from one generation to another. And I don't know the full story of how it got to the collection. But at some point, somebody wanted to preserve it. And that and that's another conversation.
[00:47:01.24] But the difficulty of Black archival institutions, archival institutions that are predominantly started and maintained by the Black community, have struggled so much at various periods of time for the funding. And so, we see in a case like that and in many others, you know, A sense that Black families will feel like there may be a sense that these other institutions will have the resources that are necessary.
[00:47:39.92] Now, there certainly are wonderful institutions that have resources. I just was visiting Atlanta University Center. And its special collections feel like special collections anywhere in a University setting, in a library setting. But I also had the experience also in Omaha of a Black History Museum that had become-- had been abandoned. And the roof had fallen in. And all this stuff inside was getting damaged and a range of different things.
[00:48:16.34] And so, you know, we have to strike a balance. I see more and more investment by Black entrepreneurs. And I think that's wonderful, in institutions that are designed to preserve that history. But it certainly, and I think that's an important part. It goes back to the post it, you know, that you came across. I mean, it's recognizing that and the importance of that in the community because of the difficulty of knowing whether or not the story will be told, of knowing whether or not the story will be understood, or whether the story will be valued in the same way. And I think that's one of the things that, hopefully, that I'm looking for as I go out there, is a way to value stories in different places.
[00:49:13.48] Yeah, oh, wow, Wendel, one of the things that what you just said occurred to me is that, in some ways, we're probably witnessing a bit of a Renaissance period in the preservation of African-American history and culture and certainly material culture. And some signals of that or signs of that is the recent reopening of the Black Holocaust museum in Milwaukee. You know, the erection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African-American history and Culture, the coming of the International African-American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. What-- and your work is certainly part of this incredible momentum to preserve and espouse the history and culture. But what do you attribute to this, almost, this momentum, this excitement in the preservation of culture, of Black culture in particular?
[00:50:18.80] Right, well, I mean, I do think it was underway. But there's no doubt that the opening of the National Museum on the Mall had a tremendous, you know, that provided a tremendous boost. Lonnie Bunch was out there all over the country meeting with people, talking about whether or not their collection should come into the-- or meeting with individuals and saying, you know, your thing could be in this collection. And really, all of what he was doing, I think, helped, even for the people that didn't want their stuff to go there, helped people to think, well, maybe we need to do something right here, and maybe there are ways in which we can do other things.
[00:51:01.37] And I remember, Clem Price who was his friend of Lonnie Bunch who's passed away and who was really a wonderful scholar, you know, all-- was talking about that struggle in that he felt that this was an advance of the museum, opening that the, sort of, old expression of all boats rising with the tide. And it was that-- and I think that probably has borne out to some extent, which is that, yes, there was some consolidation into one place. But at the same time, I think it helped incentivize independent projects even more so.
[00:51:42.41] People could point to that project and say, see, there are people-- not just that it was done, and it was beautiful. But you know, you can't get in. So many people want to go. And so, if we could do something on that level in our community, then we would have that same enthusiasm as well. And I think that-- and we and we've also seen Bryan Stevenson and the enthusiasm there and how many people you know trek to that museum as well as the installation. All of that has demonstrated, for lack of a better term, Black cultural tourism, enthusiasm, but also just broadly, you know, the degree to which there's an appetite for understanding the story.
[00:52:31.92] I mean, this is back to Isabel Wilkerson's, it's-- you can't just ignore the fact that there's water in the basement of the house and that it's-- you've got to pay attention. And I think people recognize, you've got to pay attention to all these stories, and to the extent that it brings out flaws. And I was in a workshop recently. And somebody asked the question, you know, what kind of criticisms have you ever gotten with your work in general?
[00:52:56.42] And certainly one of them has been that sometimes the things that are shown are painful. Sometimes the things that I show are not things that everybody wants to look at or think about on in both the white community and the Black community. But you can't leave the water in the basement and not expect the house to fall down. So we got to-- we got to look at it.
[00:53:22.19] Totally and on top of the pain that is tied to Black experiences and diasporic experiences, the idea of rescuing collections, the idea of orphaned-- orphaned Black, you know, memorabilia and material culture. I mean, in some ways your work as a cultural worker and as a photographer and as a researcher and as a curator is about rescuing Black culture, in some ways, from the margins. And that's pretty powerful.
[00:54:01.65] We have a ton of questions in our Q&A. And I want to make sure that we have an opportunity for you to respond to some of the questions that our audience has. Many are asking questions with regards to your practice as a photographer, Kit Loke? I think is-- or KL asked the question, why are almost all the objects shot partially blurred?
[00:54:32.62] Right, so for that is directly connected to something that I said earlier, which is that I am really connecting to the object itself as an experience. And so, one of the things that I don't want to do is to-- cross over into the illustration of the content. And so, that's a way of photographing historical material. I've got-- I've written an essay. And I want to have a photograph of this thing that goes in my essay.
[00:55:10.78] And certainly, there are lots of different approaches. And I do have some approaches to images where I photograph objects, and the whole thing is in focus. But one of the things that I've always talked about is the degree to which this is, for me, been an experience of folding time, that I'm experiencing something that's coming to me out of the past. And it is this relationship. Even if it is a relatively new object, a door from Katrina, or a very early object a slave shackle, the sense that something from the past has now traveled through time to come to me, in a sense, in front of me in a collection, is the kind of experience that I want to illuminate.
[00:55:59.23] I also want to try and describe what it feels like. And so, for me, this is just a way of describing what it feels like to encounter these objects.
[00:56:12.25] Wow.
[00:56:13.01] I think this is going around a few times. I can stop that.
[00:56:18.37] Several of our other guests also asked about your angle and focus for those images, which I think you illuminated.
[00:56:30.40] Right.
[00:56:31.24] Others wanted to also-- had very specific questions, Dr. Quincy B, how do I-- how do I assist Black families with early 1900s artifacts and possible enslaved persons-- persons narratives in a way that assists them without being too pushy?
[00:56:51.01] Right, right, absolutely, so I think that is a huge question. I know that that was one of the concerns that Clem Price and Lonnie Bunch had as they were starting to build connections for the museum. It is a very difficult question. One of the things is, of course, what resources does the family have to protect and preserve the materials?
[00:57:17.86] And if they don't have those resources, are there ways, are there contracts that can be drawn up with institutions that would both honor the wishes of the family for whatever reason in relationship to access to the material, and at the same time, provide for an ongoing presence historically? And that's always a tough thing. I mean, I sort of think I can take care of my stuff. But I probably can't in the long run.
[00:57:50.06] And so, at some point in my life I will have to think about, well, are there institutional, you know, connections that I might make to deal with stuff that I have that is-- I mean, there's like one or two things that don't-- you know, that won't go in the trash. But the things-- those one or two things, you have to think, can you provide for them sort of in perpetuity?
[00:58:15.58] And that's the way in which such narrow narratives were told in this country because and not just excluding people of color, excluding all people who are not wealthy. So excluding people who are poor don't get their stories told either because it was always something that could be done by the wealthy. You could create an ongoing trust that-- out of your own money, that would take care of your stuff going forward, to make sure your name was on something, and that it was taken care of.
[00:58:49.61] And so, if you spent a lot of time constructing and furnishing a house in Newport, and you wanted people to enjoy it into the future, you could do that with your own money if you were Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so, it's that distinction that is important to understand, is that, yeah, there are people that are able in the past and in the present that are able to use their own funds, through a trust, to do that sort of thing. But for the rest of us, it is worth thinking about partnerships with institutions.
[00:59:28.73] Wendel, I think-- I kind of want to build on that question a little bit. Are there limitations within the historical enterprise as well, you know? When I think about Black collectors, particularly those that are really preoccupied with familial records. Is that a-- is that a way to counter, for instance, the Wall of 1877, where we know that the documentation, those traditional pathways to, sort of, document Black lives through genealogy, that Black people weren't documented in those traditional modalities of documentation.
[01:00:15.29] Right, right, I mean, our names didn't appear as enslaved people. For the most part there, I've seen records where people's names appeared. And that's remarkable. And I'm sure for the families that are connected to that. I know in my own family I've seen where it crosses into that period of time. And we make a pretty good guess as to-- that this particular record is pointing to my great grandfather and his brother at the point that they are children and enslaved. But their names are not there. We just have a range of circumstances, age and place and a range of other kinds of things that make it very likely.
[01:00:58.17] But yeah, we have a lot of that. And then, coming forward, there are things in our family records, such as the family Bible, that is still today, is floating-- is in somehow, one of my cousin's houses. You know, I don't know where it is. But it's not accessible for other people to look at for research, yeah.
[01:01:22.95] Absolutely, absolutely. Denise-- Denise asked, can you talk about the artistic considerations you have while photographing these objects? You have a very particular style. Again, she looks at blurring parts of the objects, taking them at a very particular angle. Are there any other strategies, practices that guide your eye and your practice as a photographer?
[01:01:51.31] So I certainly have a certain degree to which I have an affinity for the way in which cameras and lenses and optics intersect with the world. I've always-- and in all the different modalities that I have photographed, it's always been about the notion that the camera interprets the world in a unique way. And there are lots of different unique ways that it interprets the world. And in this particular case, as in each of my projects, I try to find a modality that matches you know the sensibility of what I'm trying to convey in one way or the other.
[01:02:29.23] And in this particular case, it is-- there's a little bit of alchemy involved. I have to admit that it-- I know what sort of things I have to bring to bear. And I think I was sort of relating this before. But I don't always know if it will work. I don't know if it will generate the material that I'm hoping that it will generate because of the way-- and it's a sort of a longer technical explanation-- but the way that I put the image together is not fully revealed until I'm editing the image and looking at it. I look at it-- I edit it on the computer.
[01:03:14.13] And so, until it comes together on the computer, I don't know for sure, did I get the angle just right, is the depth of field just right, is the precise placement just right. Also, just to as one small thing to tell everyone, all of these objects, everything has been photographed under the available light in the collection. I do not bring any lights and/or lighting to the process of photographing. So these-- every object has been photographed with the lighting that you would see if you just went in the collection and asked to pull that particular object.
[01:03:52.44] So it's pretty much always in a reading room. Every once in a while, they want me out of the way, and I get it stuck in a conference room because I have a lot of stuff. But it's always in inside a room where I can be monitored. But also just typically, I'm just sitting out in the reading room. I mean, when I was at the Pusey Library, I just had the tables at the end of the room. And I had my stuff. And they just sort of said, OK, you stay down at that end. The other researchers will have plenty of room over here.
[01:04:23.75] And that was the light that I worked with. And that's the light that I'm always working with everywhere I go. And solving the unique problem that the light's always different, but everything that you see is the result of that.
[01:04:39.19] Wow, I think we have time for one more question. North Carolina Cites asks, thank you for this wonderful conversation. At the beginning of your talk, you spoke about how your work relates to the place of Black life and culture within the American landscape and land. Your title and focus on the 13 colonies give a sense of place. But I was struck by the placelessness of the objects on their black velvet backdrops.
[01:05:06.80] Right.
[01:05:07.21] Beautiful question. I wondered if you have any thoughts about the relationship between your work and place, land, and landscape?
[01:05:14.89] Right, absolutely, and for me, my answer for that is that I am in the process of building-- in the process of creating this work, I'm creating my own place. I'm bringing those objects into my place that is apart from all of these specific parts of the landscape. But I always acknowledge. It's like a land acknowledgment, every title is some sort of description of the object based on the archive or collection, however it's described in the archive or collection. I just use the information out of the database or out of the finding aid, and the name of the institution, the city and the state where that institution is located.
[01:05:59.31] So in-- the full experience is understanding where it sits in the world, what building it might sit in. You could sort of, Google the exact location in the place in the world. But the work that I'm creating is to extract it, in a sense, and create my own landscape that it sits within. And that's where a colleague of mine many years ago you know referenced the idea of a reliquary. And I have stayed with very much that idea that I've been constructing a reliquary of all of these objects. I love that idea.
[01:06:39.10] Wendel, I think I speak on behalf of all that have joined us this evening, and especially the Harvard Museum of Museums of Science and Culture and my colleagues at the Peabody. We are so grateful for your genius and your brilliance and for sharing your work with us and to the world. And we look forward to hearing more from you and your work in our galleries, available to the public for purchase as well.
[01:07:07.07] I did see one question about where can one find your Manifest book?
[01:07:14.17] Oh, OK, so that-- we are working. That is a work in progress with this. And so, that will be forthcoming. But the images from the-- earlier images from the project are on display at various times in different places. The next exhibition will be at the National Underground Railroad Foundation Center in Cincinnati-- Cincinnati as part of a photo festival starting in September.
[01:07:48.59] So there'll be a group-- actually those pictures right behind me, those will be on display at-- that exact display will be posted will be up in the center as part of a larger festival, biennial festival of photographs that will be up there. So for any of the Ohio folks that-- or folks that will be traveling there-- it'll be up from, I think it's September to March. It's up for a long time.
[01:08:16.77] Awesome, well, thank you so much for your wonderful presentation and talk. And we look forward to seeing you soon. At any rate, to our audience, thank you for being such a captive audience. If you're interested in more programs sponsored by and presented by the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, please feel free to visit us at our website at www.hmsc.harvard.edu. Take care.