Wendel A. White
Wendel A. White is a photographer and educator who has, for several decades, investigated the complex narratives held within landscapes, objects, and communities. White looks at the often-disconnected histories of Black life and how the ghosts of the past permeate present-day America. His in-depth photographic inquiries are exemplified in three significant bodies of work, Small Towns, Black Lives (1989–2002), Schools for the Colored (2002–2010), and Manifest (2009–present).
Watch
"Wendel A. White: Schools for the Colored," from State of the Arts, NJ
Selected Work
Exhibitions
Wendel A. White: “Schools for the Colored” & “Manifest”
April 5 – June 14, 2025
Artist News
EXHIBITION
Pace University Art Gallery, New York, NY
Retold: Altered Photography
June 12–July 30, 2026
Image: School for White Children, Brooklyn, Illinois, 2007
EXHIBITION
National Gallery of Art, D.C.
Beneath the Surface: Mining and American Photography
May 23 – August 23, 2026
Image: Hubbard, OH. Oct 10, 1919. The Sun, New York, NY. Oct 11, 1919, 2017, printed 2022
AWARD
First Place in Books: New England Museum Association
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Wendel A. White: Manifest | Thirteen Colonies
PRESS
“Wendel A. White”
Art Forum
By Maria Porges
September, 2025
“Over the course of several decades and across multiple bodies of work, Wendel A. White has dedicated himself to exploring how the concept of race has been constructed in the United States by recording and transforming its material traces.”
PRESS
Wendel A. White: “Schools for the Colored”
Square Cylinder
By Theodore (Ted) Barrow
May 12, 2025
“…this assembly of 14 pigment-printed digital photographs depicting formerly segregated schools trembles with freighted tension, oscillating between the distant past and an ominous future.”
