South Jersey photographer Wendel White's exhibition at Rowan University highlights Black history

GLASSBORO, New Jersey (WPVI) -- For the last 50 years, Wendel White has been capturing views of the world through his lens.

White says he was first introduced to photography as a student at Montclair High School in New Jersey and "didn't really stop." Now, White is bringing the past and present into focus in his latest exhibition called Folding Time.

"My work is really about a set of ideas and the photographs are the outcome of those ideas," he says.

While looking at his work he says it shows the wide range "in which the narrative of Black history has played out."

The exhibition at Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum in Glassboro, New Jersey includes three projects - Schools for the Colored, Manifest and Red Summer.

"The knowledge that he has about the history, about particularly the Black community here was significant," says Mary Salvante, Director and Chief Curator for Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum. "It's important for people to understand that artists are also researchers."

White, who's also a distinguished professor of art at Stockton University, researched segregated schools and took photographs through five states, from New Jersey to Illinois.

"All the silhouettes, black or the one white one, are placeholders for schools that once were located there," he says.

The Manifest project is ongoing, sparked after White found a lock of Frederick Douglass' hair in special collections at a college.

"I just became fascinated with these objects and the idea of the African American story being contained in archives," he says.

Now, he digs through public collections, finding items to spark joy like Jimi Hendrix's vest, but also painful images of slave shackles.

"It's a mixture of the aspirational and elements of Black life, the resistance to the oppression that has taken place," he says.

Red Summer links the wave of racial violence that erupted across American cities in 1919 to more modern images of those sites. Longview, Texas is one such site featured as part of the series.

White says exposing these ideas to light and air is a way to "heal those wounds."

For more information:

Wendel White: WendelWhite.com
Folding Time at Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum: Sites.Rowan.edu

Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum
301 High Street W
Glassboro, NJ 08028