Summer High School, Cairo, IL, from the "School for the Colored" series

Maker White, Wendel A. American, b. 1956

Date2007

MediumInkjet print

Dimensionsimage: 20 in x 13 in; paper: 22 in x 17 in

Credit LineMuseum purchase from the artist

Object number2007:335

About the ArtistFor his Schools for the Colored (2007) series, Wendel A. White depicts the buildings and sites of historically segregated schools for Black Americans, focusing primarily on locations in the so-called "free states" along the border of the North and South, which had a larger concentration of Black communities. White directly references a well-known passage in The Souls of Black Folks (1903) by W.E.B. Du Bois, in which he describes an experience he had among white classmates as a child: "Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others, or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil." White visualizes Du Bois's notion of this veil of prejudice, using digital imaging software to mask out the landscape around each of the schools. The effect is to isolate the "schools for the colored" from their surroundings, which then remain only partially accessible to the viewer as well. White also adopts different vantage points when photographing different buildings, a choice that subtly stresses an implied viewing position in architectural or landscape photographs. White encourages us to think about our position in relation to the building, and thus, possibly, to its history or how it relates to social conditions today.

Wendel White received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City (1980) and an MFA in Photography from the University of Texas at Austin (1982). He 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 at Stockton University. In addition to the Museum of Contemporary Photography, his work is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, TX; the Arts at CIIS, San Francisco, CA; Rochester Institute of Technology, NY; Paul R. Jones Collection of African American Art at University of Delaware; and NYPL Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY, among others. Solo exhibitions have been held at Harvard University, National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Blue Sky Gallery, Duke University, and Pingyao International Photography Festival, among many others.