In the heat of the summer, Whitney Toutenhoofd ’25, known professionally by the name Whitney Blue, set off on a solo, cross-country roadtrip.
Armed with her camera and a desire to capture the way in which small museums and tourist sites propagate an idealized version of American history, Blue composed the photo series “American Pageant.”
“Whitney Blue’s ‘American Pageant’ showcases provocatively arranged photographs that are each beautiful both for their powerful subjects and for their minimal expression and execution,” said Cynthia Roman, curator of prints, drawings and paintings at Yale University’s Lewis Walpole Library.
As a sophomore in Yale College double majoring in Art and Humanities, Blue already boasts an impressive portfolio. Her father introduced her to the art of photography and she has since immersed herself in the field. Inspired by the everyday challenges of life as an American teenager, she uses her camera to capture intriguing, multidimensional and sometimes dismal images. Blue’s past series includes “conceptual still life photography to address gun violence in American schools,” as well as works capturing “sites of vacant commercial units in a project documenting the decline of the retail industry,” she explained.
Her most recent project drew inspiration from her high school AP U.S. History textbook, entitled “American Pageant,” which Blue saw “as a strange title for a book that claims to cover American history in its entirety.”
“The word ‘pageant’ implies a sense of inauthenticity,” she wrote. “It suggests an event that prioritizes spectacle over truth.”
When composing the series, Blue visited living history museums, primarily on the East Coast, including Old Sturbridge Village, Plimoth Patuxet Museums, Colonial Williamsburg and more. She analyzed the ways “these museums and their cast of ‘costumed historians’ expose, construct and maintain our collective imagination of what it means to be American and the mythology upon which that imagination is built,” she said.
On her trip, Blue captured actors dressed in period attire, children and families visiting the sites as well as merchandise and set decor. In her shots, the modern world surrounds re-enactments of American history, shaping the way we look to the past.
“The idyllic nature of the past coming to life is contrasted with the commercial nature of the present — baby clothes, a bag of plastic toy soldiers,” Jae Rossman, fellowship program director at Beinecke Library, wrote. “Even the ragtag band of soldiers, here composed of visitors to the living museum, parallels what is often taught about the nature of those who fought early on in the American Revolutionary War.”
As a first-year, Blue received funding for this project through the Richter Summer Fellowship, which is typically awarded to upperclassmen.
She was awarded the fellowship partially due to the help of Cynthia Roman, with whom Blue connected through her first-year seminar, “Matters of Color/Color Matters.”
“I did not hesitate for a moment to recommend Whitney for this award,” Roman said, describing her proposal as “ambitious but thoughtful, well-considered and organized.”
And Blue did not disappoint her patrons. Rossman, who wrote a recommendation for Blue, spoke highly of the artist’s work.
“Subtle framing choices, like showing the rope that keeps visitors a safe distance from the live cannon, remind us that these are recreations,” Rossman said. “Yet in other images, she frames the images in a way to help the viewer suspend reality, to emphasize how believable these historical recreations seem based on what we have been taught.”
According to Blue, the series is still unfinished. She plans to expand upon this project, revisiting the sites to which she traveled this summer and exploring new destinations, all while continuing to focus on the performative and commercialized aspects of the way American history is shared.
“I am interested in what happens to our collective understanding of American history if, like a pageant, we insist that it be not only educational but entertaining,” Blue said.
Whitney Blue’s work is available to view on her website: whitneyblue.com.