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CENTER FOR DOCUMENTARY STUDIES AT DUKE UNIVERSITY
Fall 2011 Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts Fall 2011 Inaugural Class John Hope Franklin Award Student Documentary Prizewinners Certificate in Documentary Arts Spring 2011 Graduates and Projects CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography Benjamin Lowy’s Iraq | Perspectives On Exhibit O’ Say Can You See by Laura Poitras
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a Publication of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
919-660-3663 | Fax: 919-681-7600 | E-mail: docstudies@duke.edu | documentarystudies.duke.edu CDS Director: Tom Rankin CDS Associate Director for Programs & Communications: Lynn McKnight Editors: Lauren Hart and Alexa Dilworth Designer: Bonnie Campbell Graphic Design and Photography Intern: Chi Brown Publishing Intern: Maggie Smith The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University teaches, engages in, and presents documentary work grounded in collaborative partnerships and extended fieldwork that uses photography, film/video, audio, and narrative writing to capture and convey contemporary memory, life, and culture. CDS values documentary work that balances community goals with individual artistic expression. CDS promotes documentary work that cultivates progressive change by amplifying voices, advancing human dignity, engendering respect among individuals, breaking down barriers to understanding, and illuminating social injustices. CDS conducts its work for local, regional, national, and international audiences. All photographs appearing in Document® are copyright by the artist. | Document® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
COVER, top to bottom: 1) Kurney Quilts. Photograph by Kurney Ramsey Jr. 2) Hayden Pray and Jaila Ricciarelli look at dirt through a microscope as part of their science curriculum in College Bound Dorchester’s after-school program. Photograph by Victoria Fleischer, a 2010–11 Lewis Hine Documentary Fellow. 3) From the Ex Libris project. Photograph by Chelsea Flowers. 4) Installation. Photograph by Sarah Goetz. 5) Students work on their projects at the 2011 Hearing Is Believing audio institute. Photograph by Chi Brown.
contents EDUCATION 3 Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts Fall 2011 Inaugural Class Undergraduate Education Highlights 2011 John Hope Franklin Student Documentary Prizewinners Continuing Education Spring 2011 Certificate in Documentary Arts Graduates Beginning Multimedia Storytelling
FALL 2011 EXHIBITIONS 12 O’ Say Can You See? An installation by Laura Poitras Beyond the Front Porch Work by 2011 Certificate in Documentary Studies Graduates 2011 Daylight/CDS Photo Awards Winners OTHER NEWS 14 Full Frame Movies on the Lawn The Parchman Hour at PlayMakers Elaine Lawless
PEOPLE 8 Teka Selman
Lehman Brady Professorship
Assistant Director, MFA in Experimental and
FRIENDS OF CDS 15
Documentary Arts
CALENDAR 16
2011–12 Lewis Hine Documentary Fellows
Photographs by Jim Dow
Center Off
BOOKS 10 American Studies Iraq | Perspectives Photographs by Benjamin Lowy Literacy and Justice Through Photography: A Classroom Guide by Wendy Ewald, Katherine Hyde, and Lisa Lord
Cell phone photograph by Tom Rankin
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Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts
Fall 2011 Inaugural Class
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he Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke University brings together two forms of artistic activity—the documentary approach and experimental production in analog, digital, and computational media—in a unique program that will foster collaborations across disciplines and media as it trains sophisticated, creative art practitioners. Successful completion of the program requires the development of a complex understanding of documentary practices and traditions as well as creative skills in experimental media and new technologies. The philosophy of the program is guided by a belief in the intersection of personal artistic work with interpretive knowledge and of the relevance of the individual documentary/experimental artist within the cultural history and life of communities. A key component to the program is the notion of creative engagement through the arts and the role of the artist in society. Graduates are expected to generate work that has impact both within and outside the academy. The MFAEDA welcomes sixteen students into its inaugural class: Eric Barstow was born in Manhattan, New York, and lived in Queens during his childhood. He has placed all of his focus on filmmaking and understanding the process from beginning to end. He graduated summa cum laude from St. Augustine’s College, where he studied film. Marika Borgeson is from Albuquerque, New Mexico. She works primarily in 16mm to explore the materiality of the medium through physical manipulation of film. She also interrogates ideas of memory and authenticity through the appropriation of strangers’ home movies to tell familial histories. She hopes to investigate
the role film can play in the cultural exploration and preservation of marginalized indigenous populations. Philip Brubaker works in video and digital and film still photography. His award-winning documentaries have screened worldwide and have been written about in the New York Times. Abandoned is his current project. Laura Doggett has been directing youth media and creative arts programs for over ten years. She has worked with the Educational Video Center in New York; with teenagers at the Latin American Youth Center in Washington, D.C., producing radio documentaries and a bilingual telenovella series; with youth in the Appalachian Mountains at Appalshop in Kentucky; and she started a media program for young women at High Rocks for Girls in West Virginia. She has also taught creative writing and theater to immigrant teenagers at the International High School in Queens, New York. Wolfgang Hastert is an award-winning filmmaker and media artist whose films on American photographers and culture have been shown worldwide. Using quirky and experimental approaches, he continues to work on the intersection of the moving and the still image. Recently he embarked on making handmade books documenting his life as an immigrant. He has taught film production, digital editing, and experimental photography at the University of California, San Diego. Braxton Hood comes to the Duke MFA program with a degree in cultural studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and with years of experience in directing, producing, and editing educational media; ABOVE AND ON PAGE 4: Carpentry Shop renovation, future home of the MFAEDA. Photograph by Tom Rankin.
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working with NGO lead initiatives; and collaborating with independent artists. She is particularly interested in the distinction between fiction and documentary genres, complicating narrative conventions, and navigating the often-elusive nature of memory transmission, which time-based mediums afford. Elizabeth Landesberg hopes to teach storytelling to all ages and put different communities and cultures in conversation through creative multimedia projects. She brings to the MFAEDA her background in anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking, passion for oral history, and experience working with children in Los Angeles, Bolivia, Mexico, and Guatemala. Nicole LeCorgne, originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, holds an MA in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University. She is a percussionist, ethnomusicologist, and photographer specializing in the music and culture of the Middle East. She has performed, taught workshops, and lectured throughout the United States and internationally, and received Fulbright funding to conduct photographic research on the musical life of Cairo. Her work has been exhibited through the Smithsonian Institute’s Museum on Main Street. Peter G. Lisignoli is a New Mexico–based inter-media artist, musician, and educator with a focus on Latin America, public space, and migrant communities. His artistic practice includes film, digital video, photography, collage, and live analog projections. Annabel Manning creates participatory art installations combining custom-designed software with such mediums as digital and nondigital printmaking, painting, drawing, and video. She was raised in Latin America and is exploring issues related to immigration in her current work, as well as other subjects that engage the personal and political. Lisa McCarty creates images using cameras and photographic processes with technical limitations in order to address the imperfect yet wondrous systems that govern cognition and consciousness. Lisa is from Arlington, Virginia, and has exhibited nationally and internationally
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since earning a BFA from George Mason University in 2005. Laurenn McCubbin is a graphic designer, artist, and illustrator, who recently received an MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her comic book work has been published by Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, and McSweeney’s. Her graphic novel Rent Girl (with Michelle Tea) was optioned for television. Natalie Minik is from Atlanta, Georgia, and graduated from the University of Georgia with degrees in photography and journalism. She also attended the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in 2005. Currently she is co-founder and editor of One, One Thousand | A Publication for Southern Photography. Jolene Mok was born and raised in Hong Kong. She is an artist and researcher working in photography, video, and new media. Her work always incorporates participatory research with visual ethnography, emphasizing interaction and collaboration among participants and coauthors. Talena Sanders is an interdisciplinary artist utilizing a range of media, including film photography, digital video, live digital video mixing, moving image film, and installation, to explore the ways humans express individual and collective identities. Her past work has included candid examinations of individuals’ processes of self-discovery and expressions of lifestyle through their relationships with their professions, material possessions, and immediate environments, and their choices in appearance and dress. Originally from Lexington, Kentucky, she has been living and working in North Carolina for the past year. Joel Wanek is a photographer and educator in Chicago. With his students, he is interested in collaboratively exploring the endless possibilities of pairing sound, text, and image.
MFAEDA Welcome Party Carpentry Shop 1509 Campus Drive September 8, 2011, 6–9 p.m.
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Undergraduate Education Highlights 2011 John Hope Franklin Student Documentary Prizewinners
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stablished in 1989 by the Center for Documentary Studies, the John Hope Franklin Student Documentary Awards are named for the noted scholar John Hope Franklin, the late professor emeritus of history at Duke University, in recognition of his lifetime accomplishments and his dedication to students and teaching. CDS makes these awards to undergraduates attending North Carolina’s Triangle-area universities to help them conduct summer-long documentary fieldwork projects. Student applicants should demonstrate an interest in documentary studies and possess the talent and skills necessary to conduct an intensive documentary project. These skills may include oral history, photography, film/video, nonfiction or creative writing, audio, or active interest in community service programs. This year’s winners are: Dorje Dondrub (Duke University) Dorje Dondrub is producing a documentary video about the aftermath of a 7.3 magnitude earthquake that hit Kyegu, a town in Yushu prefecture in eastern Tibet, in early 2010. The Tibetan government is working to rebuild the town, but in the meantime, surviving residents have moved their homes, schools, shops, restaurants, and other basic infrastructures to tents outside of the city. Many students have been transferred to schools in Chinese cities, and residents fear that a generation will lose their Tibetan language. Dorje followed a relocated family as they waited for the government to help rebuild their demolished city, renegotiated their land rights, and managed their emotional and spiritual responses to tragedy.
Shining Li (Duke University) Shining Li is producing an audio documentary about Writopia Lab, a creative writing nonprofit that holds workshops, readings, and other events for kids interested in the literary arts. Her work explores the importance of arts education to the young writers who participate in Writo-
pia Lab, especially as American education policy increasingly emphasizes science and math in the classroom. Jonathan Pattishall (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Jonathan Pattishall is documenting the ongoing conflict over beach access on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina. His project consists of a series of audio interviews with people involved on all sides of the conflict: environmental groups interested in the protection of endangered species; beach access proponents, including business owners, sports fishers, and off-road recreational vehicle drivers; and the National Park Service, which has been implementing its own temporary, court-ordered management plan to close off sensitive spots that provide some of the best surf fishing on the East Coast. Eddie Wu (Duke University) Eddie Wu is using photography and audio to document the lives of a few graduating seniors at Madison High School in Madison County, North Carolina, a mostly rural and mountainous part of the state. His project will follow young adults in a transition period in their lives, and will be a survey of summertime activities, as well as a look ahead to their futures. Eddie has previously documented the experience of students using the county’s school bus system.
y cds.aas.duke.edu/jhf Vendors sell fried potatoes and onions, called pakoras, outside of the Kali Mandir, a Hindu temple in Jampalur, a small town in the state of Bihar, India. Photograph by Priyanka Chaurasia, a prizewinner in 2010.
Find out more about CDS at documentarystudies.duke.edu
Seminar in Documentary Studies and presented their work to the public in May.
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The Students and Their Projects John Crane | Jerusalem Journal [Video] John Crane is a retired former business owner who splits his time between volunteering with nonprofit organizations and learning documentary filmmaking. In 2005, he visited Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories with members of the Coalition for Peace with Justice, to meet with peace organizations and learn about the current conflict. In 2008, Crane returned to Jerusalem and revisited people he had filmed three years earlier. Jerusalem Journal gives viewers a glimpse into aspects of Palestinian life that they are unlikely to get from newspapers and broadcast television. Paul Deblinger | Us... Them… United States [Video] Paul Deblinger has published poems, short stories, and essays in a variety of publications and is the author of Culpepper’s Guide to Minneapolis and St. Paul. He has worked in marketing and communications in thoroughbred racing and health and veterinary medicine, developing audio, video, and print material. Us… Them… United States is the story of Pedro Guzman, a properly documented political refugee who was imprisoned because of an administrative error by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. His American-born wife and child are stunned by the sudden loss and do everything they can to reunite their family.
Continuing Education Spring 2011 Certificate in Documentary Arts Throughout the year, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University offers continuing education courses in the documentary arts for the general public. These courses, taught by working professionals, are designed to help students of all ages and backgrounds gain the skills to explore documentary on their own terms. The goal of the Certificate Program is the completion of a set of courses culminating in the Final Seminar, in which students finish and present a substantial documentary project. Most certificate students are working adults who take a minimum of two years to complete coursework and a project. Students are encouraged to create a final project that best suits their topic of interest and their needs. Numerous documentary videos have won awards in festivals, and many photo exhibits and websites have been created and unveiled, all from work started in this program. Nine students completed projects in this spring’s Final
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Eric Douglas | For Cheap Lobster [Photography] Eric Douglas has worked as a writer and photographer since he completed journalism school at Marshall University, and is currently director of education for Divers Alert Network in Durham, North Carolina. He photographed groups of divers in Puerto Lempira, Honduras; Baja California, Mexico; and Natal, Brazil, to learn more about their lives and the dangerous conditions of their work harvesting lobster, sea cucumber, conch, abalone, and even algae to feed international markets. Chelsea Flowers | Ex Libris [Video] Chelsea Flowers is pursuing a degree in public history and is interested in multimedia history exhibits outside of museums, neighborhood documentary screenings, and teaching collectives. Ex Libris is about the Chapel Hill Prison Books Collective, one of only twenty-five books-to-prisoners groups in the United States. Ex Libris, a phrase that means “from the library of,” suggests the potential fluidity of literature and, in turn, the exchange of ideas and support between those in and outside prison.
Conrad Fulkerson | Godmother [Video] Conrad Fulkerson is a psychiatrist who grew up near Kansas City. He has produced videos for medical student teaching and brief biographies. Godmother follows Kate Fulkerson, who strives to provide puppies the best possible start in life, rather than directing efforts towards rescuing dogs after abandonment, neglect, or abuse. Paige Greason | Face to Face [Video] Paige Greason is a psychotherapist and former journalist who currently works as the senior mental health counselor at the UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. She is also an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Counseling at Wake Forest University, and she teaches yoga. In Face to Face, six North Carolinians living with multiple sclerosis share their stories of loss, self-discovery, and transcendence. Jeremy Helton | Blues Run the Game [Audio] Jeremy Helton has toured in Tennessee as a roadie for punk bands, booked shows at nightclubs in Atlanta, and worked for regional record labels, such as Indigo Girl Amy Ray’s Daemon Records. He has worked as a field producer for StoryCorps and is cofounder of the Recollective, a group of independent media producers. In Blues Run the Game, Buffalo, New York, native Jillian Mertz talks about how a little-known folk musician from her hometown helped her understand her complex relationship with her father, magician Ray Mertz. Eileen Heyes | Raleigh’s Village Idiots: Yes, And… [Audio] Eileen Heyes is a journalist and author of five children’s books. She is developing a series of documentaries about the Triangle’s vibrant small-theater community. Raleigh’s Village Idiots: Yes, And… features a comedy improv troupe that presents two shows a month at the North Raleigh Arts and Creative Theater. Kurney Ramsey Jr. | Returning [Photography] Kurney Ramsey Jr. is a photographer living in Swansboro, North Carolina. He is using photography to document his family, the land they own, and the homes they have lived in. He has worked on this project over the course of two years, through the light of winter, spring, summer, and fall.
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FEATURED COURSE Beginning Multimedia Storytelling September 12–November 7, 2011 (no class 10/31) Through hands-on learning and critiques, students will gain an understanding of what multimedia is, where it is going, and how it can be used for powerful storytelling. Students will be exposed to cutting-edge work and engage in critical discussions about what elements make for effective multimedia storytelling. The course, taught by Catherine Orr and Elena Rue, will provide students with a foundation in gathering high-quality audio and visuals as well as the skills to produce their own multimedia piece. A background in either photography or audio is helpful but not required. Students will need a digital SLR camera and audio recorder and will learn the basics of using Final Cut Pro. Catherine Orr is a multimedia storyteller who enjoys nearly all aspects of visual communication but is most drawn to telling stories through documentary-style video and photography projects. She is a 2011 graduate of the master’s program in the UNC–Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she was a Park Fellow and a 2011 Carnegie-Knight News21 Fellow. She received her bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary, and she worked as the communications coordinator for the Office of International Education at the University of Richmond. Elena Rue is a multimedia storyteller who uses the camera as a tool for exploration and learning. As a 2006 Lewis Hine Fellow, Elena spent ten months working with a non-governmental organization, Hope for Children, in Ethiopia. For three years she coordinated the Literacy Through Photography program at the Center for Documentary Studies. She is a 2011 graduate of the master’s program at the UNC–Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she was a 2010 Carnegie-Knight News21 Fellow and a 2010–11 Reese Felts Digital Newsroom Fellow. Register now for fall CDS Continuing Education courses and workshops:
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ABOVE: Record collectors, from Blues Run the Game. Photograph by Chaela Herridge-Meyer and Jeremy Helton. OPPOSITE, top: Palestine. Photograph by John Crane. OPPOSITE, bottom: Students at the 2011 Documentary Video Institute. Photograph by Chi Brown.
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PEOPLE
Teka SelmaN
Assistant Director, MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts
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eka Selman is the assistant director of Duke’s Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts. Her experience in the arts ranges from commercial to nonprofit arts management, most recently as partner at Branch Gallery in Durham, North Carolina. Selman received an MA in Art History and Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a BA in Art History and Anthropology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has lectured on such topics as artists of the African Diaspora, gallery practice, film, and new media at institutions and events including the 2010 Sydney Biennial, the International Curators Forum in Barbados, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and the Venice Biennale in Italy. Her writing on artists such as Mark Bradford, Coco Fusco, and Kara Walker, among other artists, has been featured in a number of publications including The Black Moving Cube (Green Box Kunstedition, 2006), Freestyle (Studio Museum in Harlem, 2001), and OneWorld Magazine. The following is from an interview with Teka Selman conducted by CDS intern Katie Youmans. KY: Could you tell me a little about your previous work and educational background? TS: I studied art history and anthropology as an undergrad at the University of Michigan. From there, I worked in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and learned a lot about how museums are run. After a couple of years, I went to Goldsmiths for visual studies and critical theory. While there, I started at the Gagosian Gallery as an intern, and then worked with their marketing and communications person, which led me to work with them in New York. I eventually left there, and while working for another gallery, called Sikkema Jenkins & Co., as a director, I really discovered how much I love working with artists. My husband was offered the position of curator at the Nasher Museum here at Duke, and we moved to North Carolina about five years ago. I had a gallery with a friend of mine for a couple years, and then took a break to have a kid for a little while. When this opportunity came up to work with the MFA, I was excited because it was an opportunity to work with artists in a more formative stage in their career. KY: What got you interested in being involved with the Experimental and Documentary Arts program? TS: It was very exciting to be able to be involved with something from the beginning, and part of the appeal was to be working at Duke. It was really heartening to see some momentum behind graduate study in the visual arts on Duke’s campus. This will be Duke’s first MFA, so it was an excellent proposition to help formulate what will hopefully be the beginning of more formal study of the visual arts and performing arts practice on campus. KY: How does the MFA fit into the Center for Documentary Studies’ other programs? TS: CDS is already well respected as a place for documentary practice, and there’s been a demand for something like this here. People come here for the summer institutes and the certificate program, but there are people who want more time than a couple of weeks to devote to their practice. This will become a natural extension of the certificate program,
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with interaction between the MFA and CDS, so it seems like a natural fit. KY: What can students expect when starting the MFAEDA? TS: The program is set up with the goal of creating a sense of community within the group of students who are coming. Students will take courses in experimental film and video practice, in documentary fieldwork, theory courses, courses that examine computational media, and they can also select electives from anywhere in the university, so there may be some students who will take courses at the divinity school, others who might take a law or a medical course, all in the service of creating a work that pushes beyond the boundaries of what their traditional practice might be. KY: Is there one aspect of the program that you find especially exciting? TS: I am probably most excited about the second-year MFA exhibition; I think that will be something unlike anything Duke has ever seen before. Rather than a traditional MFA exhibition, it will be everywhere, on campus and in downtown Durham. Students can engage questions of community, access, audience, and it will likewise be a wonderful opportunity for the community to see what’s happening in the MFA at Duke.
y mfaeda.duke.edu Teka Selman. Photograph by Chi Brown.
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Founded on the spirit, values, and actions of Lewis Hine, the Lewis Hine Documentary Fellows Program connects the talents of young documentarians with the resources and needs of organizations serving children and their communities around the world. This year’s fellowships have been awarded to Indaia Whitcombe and Christopher Fowler. Indaia Whitcombe, a graduate in sociocultural anthropology from Bennington College in Vermont, brings to the Hine fellowship a strong commitment to and impressive experience with humanitarian causes. Over the last six years, Indaia has helped educate young people about HIV/AIDS in Kenya, worked with the Hopi through
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a Headstart program in Arizona, conducted fieldwork with Berber agropasturalists in Morocco, and worked as a teacher in Namibia and, most recently, in India. She has brought her photographic eye to all of these experiences. Over the last year, she has been working toward her certificate in documentary studies at Duke, concentrating on photography and audio. Indaia will work with the South Boston Boys and Girls Club. She says, “This fellowship would in every way support and contribute to my future goals: to create documentary work that is concerned with the betterment of humanity; illuminate issues that have been overlooked or unrealized; and in doing so, to encourage necessary action for change.” Christopher Fowler, who received a master’s degree in folklore this spring from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has taken many writing, photography, and audio courses at CDS over the last two years. Having grown up in rural eastern North Carolina, an area heavily impacted by the hog industry, Chris focused his master’s thesis on the James family, a third-generation African American family of farmers, hoping that their example may help inspire a more responsible, equitable, and sustainable model of food production. Due to the quality and depth of his work, Chris was invited to be a teaching assistant for Lehman Brady professor Mike Wiley and CDS director Tom Rankin. Chris will travel to Boston to work with the Food Project, an organization that engages young people in personal and social change through sustainable agriculture. Chris says, “Most of my work thus far has focused on rural and southern issues. The Hine fellowship offers me the opportunity to test the waters of a northeastern, urban environment. I believe that being pushed out of one’s comfort zone is imperative for intellectual and creative growth.” This is the sixth year that an anonymous donor represented by the Philanthropic Initiative in Boston has supported Lewis Hine Fellows to document the stories of organizations meeting the region’s pressing social needs. To see the work of former Hine fellows:
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The Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center’s ballroom dance scene is a locus for collective memory, social organization, and identity building. Photographs by Jennifer Carpenter, a 2010—11 Lewis Hine Documentary Fellow.
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CDS BOOKS New and Forthcoming Publications American Studies Photographs by Jim Dow With an introduction by Ian Frazier Jim Dow’s America is a land we both know and don’t know. His photographs show a country always reinventing itself, discarding and preserving elements of its past, almost as though by accident. These places, often built by ordinary Americans for the most ordinary of purposes, share inventiveness with commonality, resilience with restlessness, and grace with roughness. Dow sees a landscape shaped by human life—his photographs take us ever closer to the human instinct to make and leave a mark. American Studies is a compendium of many of Dow’s best-known images, which were made over almost forty years of traveling the road with his large-format camera. “What I love about Jim Dow’s pictures is that they’re not kidding. . . . In wordless ways America continually describes its vision to us, dropping broad hints about what its citizens are expected to be. With these photographs Dow catches the hints latent in dozens of American settings. . . . Aspects of his photographs are funny, maybe even hilarious, but that’s only noted in passing. He’s more interested in what the American vision is, or was, and in the scary open-endedness of our identity.” —Ian Frazier, from his introduction
Artist’s Talk and Book Signing September 9, 2011, 6:30 p.m. Center for Documentary Studies Auditorium Published by powerHouse Books and CDS Books of the Center for Documentary Studies 136 pages / 115 color and black and white photographs $39.95 hardcover / ISBN 978-1-57687-565-0 Now available in bookstores or by ordering from powerHouse Books:
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For more information and news of upcoming events:
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Iraq | Perspectives Photographs by Benjamin Lowy Selected by William Eggleston to win the biennial Center for Documentary Studies/ Honickman First Book Prize in Photography Benjamin Lowy’s powerful color photographs, taken over a six-year period through Humvee windows and military-issue night vision goggles, capture the desolation of a war-ravaged Iraq as well as provide us with a new way of looking at the war—an entirely different framework for regarding and thinking about the everyday activities of Iraqis in a devastated landscape and the movements of soldiers on patrol. “These images were practically asking to be in a book together—everything about them—the conception, the subject, the fact that we’re still at war, the way the pictures were taken. Benjamin’s work is an opportunity to see as an American soldier sees when in Iraq—nobody I know of has ever shown that, especially through night vision goggles.” —William Eggleston “The pictures show a fragment of Iraqi daily life . . . yet they are a window to a world where work, play, tension, grief, survival, and everything in between is as familiar as the events of our own lives . . . More often than not, the rest of Iraq, like the rest of us, are left in the dark, but I hope that these images provide the viewer with momentary illumination of the fear and desperation that is war.” —Benjamin Lowy Published by Duke University Press and CDS Books of the Center for Documentary Studies 120 pages / 96 color photographs $39.95 hardover / ISBN 978-0-8223-5166-5 Available in November in bookstores or by ordering from Duke University Press:
y dukeupress.edu To see more images and to learn more about the CDS/ Honickman First Book Prize in Photography:
y firstbookprizephoto.com
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Photographs by Benjamin Lowy On exhibit at the Special Collections Gallery Perkins Library, Duke West Campus
October 23–December 11, 2011 Opening Reception and Book Signing November 10, 5:30–7:30 p.m. Rare Book Room, Perkins Library
LITERACY AND JUSTICE THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY A Classroom Guide Wendy Ewald, Katherine Hyde, and Lisa Lord In Literacy and Justice Through Photography, Wendy Ewald, Katherine Hyde, and Lisa Lord share their perspectives as an artist, a sociologist, and a teacher to build
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on students’ own ideas and experiences in integrating four Literacy Through Photography projects—American Alphabets, The Best Part of Me, Black Self/ White Self, and Memories of Past Centuries—into the curricula. Using the backdrop of contemporary culture and the politics of urban schools, the book presents creative and engaging portraits, detailed project descriptions and lesson plans, and reflections and resources to promote critical thinking, self-expression, and respect in the classroom while also addressing the standards across various disciplines and grade levels. “We believe that a primary reason for doing these projects is that they provide students the chance to explore— with honesty, creativity, and critical thinking—important social, personal, and political topics that otherwise are easily avoided in the classroom. . . . Whether looking at the body, identity, race, culture, and/or language . . . Literacy Through Photography, as a philosophy and practice, is about students learning to read and write by doing, by creating their own works of art (rather than studying someone else’s) that combine words and images to express an idea and to tell a story.” —Wendy Ewald, Katherine Hyde, and Lisa Lord, from their introduction Published by Teachers College Press and CDS Books of the Center for Documentary Studies 192 pages / 80 black and white photographs $27.95 paperback, $60 hardcover ISBN 978-9-8077-5281-4 pb, 978-0-8077-5282-1 hc Available in November in bookstores or by ordering from Teachers College Press:
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To learn more about Literacy Through Photography:
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TOP: A woman looks at a passing U.S. Army Humvee as the unit patrols a commercial district of Abu Ghraib, Iraq, 2007. Photograph by Benjamin Lowy. BOTTOM: Still images from the video “Memories of Past Centuries,” 1998. From Literacy and Justice Through Photography.
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EXHIBITIONS
O’ Say Can You See Installation by Laura Poitras July 25–October 22, 2011 Kreps Gallery On September 11, 2001, filmmaker Laura Poitras was in lower Manhattan, where she lives. In the hours and days after the bombing and collapse of the World Trade Center Towers she shot film footage of stunned and grief-stricken citizens. The world has dramatically changed since that date, and Poitras has made two probing and powerful documentary films that examine post-9/11 socio-political realities as they impact individuals, families, government policies, and belief systems. O’ Say Can You See is Poitras’s first gallery exhibition. The installation features a projection of the imagery from Ground Zero in 2001, with audio recorded weeks later at the Yankees’ come-from-behind Game 4 World Series victory on October 20. Poitras says, “O’ Say Can You See is a meditation on loss and revenge.” Interviews with recently released detainees from Guantanamo Bay are presented on flat screen monitors, adding new layers of information and emotion about the War on Terror.
Artist’s Talk and Reception September 20, 2011, 6–9 p.m., talk at 7 p.m. Center for Documentary Studies
Beyond the Front Porch 2011 CDS Certificate in Documentary Studies Graduates May 1–September 3, 2011 CDS Porch and University Galleries The collection Beyond the Front Porch features the work of this year’s sixteen Documentary Studies Certificate recipients. These students seek to address social issues, comment on education reform, capture the Durham
Visit on the CDS Porch, our news blog, cdsporch.org
revival, and mold portraits through their work. Through these documentaries, the graduating class makes use of the skills they have learned through their time as Duke undergraduates. This exhibition is an opportunity for them to celebrate their community, to delve deeply into their families, and to bring individuals together. To learn more about the 2011 graduates and their final projects :
y http://sites.duke.edu/cdscapstone2011/
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Winners of the 2011 Daylight/CDS Photo Awards September 19–December 22, 2011 Porch and University Galleries A solo show featuring Project Prize winner Tamas Dezso and a group exhibition featuring Work-in-Process Prize winner David Pace along with Jurors’ Pick winners in both categories.
Reception: Tuesday, October 4, 7 p.m.
ABOVE, top: Night watchman, Budapest, 2009. Photograph by Tamas Dezso. ABOVE, bottom: Friday night, Burkina Faso, 2007. Photograph by David Pace. OPPOSITE: O’ Say Can You See. Still image from film by Laura Poitras. Photograph by Natalie Crimp.
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Upcoming Exhibits
In recognition of mutual interests in documentary and fine art photography, Daylight Magazine and the Center for Documentary Studies started an international competition in 2010, the Daylight/CDS Photo Awards, to honor and promote talented and committed photographers, both emerging and established. 2011 Guest Jurors: Anthony Bannon, director, George Eastman House; Darren Ching, owner, Klompching Gallery, and creative director, Photo District News; Stacey D. Clarkson, art director, Harper’s Magazine; Whitney Johnson, picture editor, The New Yorker; Joel Sternfeld*, photographer; Sasha Wolf, owner, Sasha Wolf Gallery The Center for Documentary Studies and Daylight Magazine are proud to present the work of these gifted photographers. Tamas Dezso (Budapest, Hungary) Here, Anywhere Winner and Juror’s Pick (Darren Ching and Sasha Wolf), Project Prize David Pace (Los Altos, California) Friday Night Winner, Work-in-Process Prize John Cyr (Brooklyn, New York) Juror’s Pick (Anthony Bannon), Project Prize James Dodd (Sheffield, England) Juror’s Pick (Anthony Bannon), Work-in-Process Prize Baldomero Fernandez (New York, New York) Juror’s Pick (Sasha Wolf), Work-in-Process Prize Lydia Goldblatt (London, England) Juror’s Pick (Darren Ching), Work-in-Process Prize Shane Lavalette (Somerville, Massachusetts) Juror’s Pick (Whitney Johnson), Project Prize Sebastian Liste (Barcelona, Spain) Juror’s Pick (Whitney Johnson), Project Prize Lorenzo Martelli (Milan, Italy) Juror’s Pick (Stacey Clarkson), Work-in-Process Prize Kris Vervaeke (Singapore, Singapore) Juror’s Pick (Stacey Clarkson), Project Prize *Joel Sternfeld reviewed and ranked all entries in both categories but elected not to make juror picks.
Find out more about CDS at documentarystudies.duke.edu
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OTHER NEWS
Full Frame Movies on the Lawn For the second year in a row, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival collaborated with American Tobacco to present Movies on the Lawn. This summer’s series featured four music documentaries: Troubadours by Morgan Neville traces Carole King, James Taylor, and the singer/songwriter scene during the late 1960s and early 1970s; Soul Power by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte features American R&B and African musical groups in a twelve–hour concert in Kinshasa, Zaire, in 1974; One Night in Kernersville by Rodrigo Dorfman (2011 Full Frame Jury Award for Best Short) captures a recording session with jazz bassist John Brown and his big band; and Do It Again by Robert PattonSpruill follows a journalist on a mission to reunite the British rock band the Kinks.
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THE PARCHMAN HOUR In the fiery first months of America’s civil rights movement, waves of young people, mostly college students, rode buses into the heart of the Deep South. Many were brutally attacked, arrested, and imprisoned in Mississippi’s notorious Parchman Farm Penitentiary, where they invented an ingenious pastime to help them endure, a live variety show inspired by programs then popular on radio and television. Jokes, stories, singing, and Bible readings sprang from every cell. This nightly event became known as The Parchman Hour. With characters such as Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy, The Parchman Hour honors an important piece of history. The Parchman Hour: Songs and Stories of the ’61 Freedom Riders, written and directed by Mike Wiley, will make its professional premiere at PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, October 26–November 13, 2011. The Center for Documentary Studies is a coproducer of the production. Wiley created the play while he was the Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke and UNC–Chapel Hill in 2010. Call the PlayMakers box office at 919-962-PLAY(7529) or visit:
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TOP: Audience at Full Frame Movies on the Lawn series. Photograph by Maggie Smith. LEFT: The Parchman Hour at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan Theatre, December 2010. Photograph by Christopher Fowler.
Visit on the CDS Porch, our news blog, cdsporch.org
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OCUMEN
Elaine Lawless, Curators’ Teaching Professor and Professor of English at the University of Missouri, will be a visiting professor at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011–12. This fall she will hold the Nannerl Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professorship, which recognizes the remarkable contributions of Dr. Nan Keohane during her term as president of Duke and the unprecedented level of collaboration she and former UNC Chancellor James Moeser created between the two institutions. Faculty and administrators at UNC and Duke nominate outstanding scholars, artists, or practitioners for the visiting professorship. As part of the Keohane Professorship, Lawless will give a public lecture drawing on her work on domestic violence on October 26 in the University Room at Hyde Hall at UNC. In conjunction, Lawless is arranging to have the troupe from her Troubling Violence project come to North Carolina to perform an ethnographic theater piece that she and University of Missouri Professor Heather Carver developed from the stories in Lawless’s book Women Escaping Violence. Also this fall Lawless will teach Ethnographic Writing at UNC. Discussions will center on field notes and journaling and on scholarly texts that evolve out of those earlier writings. The course will focus on how ethnographic writing has taken a creative turn in recent years by challenging notions of objectivity and moving toward more artistic forms. Lawless is the author of six books and many scholarly articles, and is the co-producer (with Elizabeth Peterson) of a documentary film on Pentecostalism, Joy Unspeakable. At the University of Missouri, she has received numerous teaching and research awards. She founded and is the producer of the Troubling Violence Performance Project. A past president of the American Folklore Society (2007–10), Lawless serves on the board of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and is currently humanities coordinator for the national Veterans Oral History Project in Missouri. In Spring 2012 Lawless will be the Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke and UNC–Chapel Hill.
LEHMAN BRADY PROFESSOR Filmmaker and author Charles D. Thompson Jr. will be the Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor for Fall 2011. This collaborative, cross-campus arrangement
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affords significant opportunities for study, research, and participation in educational activities associated with distinguished writers, photographers, filmmakers, and other practitioners and scholars of the documentary arts. The Lehman Brady Professor teaches courses on both campuses and engages in lectures, film screenings, and other events for students and the general public. Thompson will teach a seminar, Politics of Food, for UNC and Duke students. The course will explore the food system, its workers and working conditions, through fieldwork among food and farming community members, including farmers, nutritionists, sustainable agriculture advocates, rural organizers, and farmworker activists. Thompson, curriculum and education director at the Center for Documentary Studies, is a lecturer in cultural anthropology at Duke University. He is the author most recently of Spirits of Just Men: Mountaineers, Liquor Bosses, and Lawmen in the Moonshine Capital of the World. His films include Brother Towns / Pueblos Hermanos, The Guestworker, and We Shall Not Be Moved. The Lehman Brady Chair is supported by two endowment funds, one established at the Center for Documentary Studies by the Lyndhurst Foundation and the other established at Duke University by the bequest of Lehman Brady, an attorney from Durham, North Carolina, who died in 1995. Past Lehman Brady Professors are Tom Rankin (Spring 2011), Mike Wiley, (Spring 2010 and Fall 2010), Paul Hendrickson (Fall 2009), Alice Gerrard (Spring 2009), Rayna Green (Fall 2008), Brett Cook (Spring 2008), David S. Cecelski (Fall 2007, Fall 2003, Fall 2001–Spring 2002), Karen Michel (Fall 2006–Spring 2007), Natasha Trethewey (Fall 2005–Spring 2006), Allan Gurganus (Fall 2004–Spring 2005), John Cohen (Spring 2004), Randall Kenan (Fall 2002–Spring 2003), Deborah Willis (Fall 2000–Spring 2001), and Bill C. Malone (Spring 2000).
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ELAINE LAWLESS
JOIN FRIENDS OF CDS The best way to get involved at the Center for Documentary Studies is to support the documentary arts. This is easy to do, by making a contribution through Friends of CDS. Through their contributions, Friends of CDS help to support the Center for Documentary Studies, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization affiliated with Duke University. Because the founders of the Center for Documentary Studies envisioned an organization that would bridge campus and community life, CDS was established as neither an academic department nor a traditional university educational center. Rather, CDS functions as an independent not-for-profit organization, with its own budget and fundraising goals. Two Ways To Give: You may make a secure on-line donation at http://cds.aas.duke.edu/ donate OR you may send a check payable to “Center for Documentary Studies” at Friends of CDS, 1317 W. Pettigrew Street, Durham, NC 27705 For More Information: Contact Lynn McKnight, Associate Director for Programs and Communications, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University: 919-660-3663 or docstudies@duke.edu
Find out more about CDS at documentarystudies.duke.edu
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All events are on the Duke University campus unless otherwise noted. Please check the CDS calendar on the web for updates to this events listing
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DOCUMENT a Publication of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University | 2011
Calendar
Fall 2011
y http://cds.aas.duke.edu/events/index.html
June 2, 6 p.m. First Thursday at the Nasher
July 15 Full Frame Movies on the Lawn
September 6, 5–7:30 p.m. Information Session
October 4, 6–8 p.m. Gallery Reception
Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
American Tobacco Campus, downtown Durham, NC
Center for Documentary Studies
Center for Documentary Studies
September 8, 6–9 p.m. MFA Launch Party
Work with a fellow student to produce and edit a short audio documentary
Welcoming students in the inaugural class of Duke’s new MFA program in Experimental and Documentary Arts
October 15–16 Full Frame Fix
Center for Documentary Studies
Carpentry Shop, Campus Drive
Nasher Museum of Art
June 4–11 Documentary Video Institute
July 24–29 Digging In: An Audio Retreat with Big Shed
September 9, 6:30 p.m. Book Talk and Reception
October 26–November 13 The Parchman Hour
Center for Documentary Studies
Center for Documentary Studies
June 16–17 Literacy Through Photography Workshop
July 25 O’ Say Can You See
Gallery talk by Courtney Reid-Eaton on The Jazz Loft Project: W. Eugene Smith in New York City, 1957—1965
June 4, 5–8 p.m. Book Party with Music
Spirits of Just Men: Mountaineers, Liquor Bosses, and Lawmen in the Moonshine Capital of the World by Charles D. Thompson Jr. Fullsteam Brewery, Durham, NC
An immersion in the process of documentary filmmaking
A hands-on method for teaching children through visual imagery Center for Documentary Studies
June 19–24 Intensive Introduction to Documentary Studies
An institute open to students of all levels of expertise Center for Documentary Studies
June 24 Full Frame Movies on the Lawn A summer series of outdoor screenings presented by the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
American Tobacco Campus, downtown Durham, NC
A summer series of outdoor screenings presented by the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
July 17–23 Hearing Is Believing I
A creative retreat for audio producers working on individual projects
An installation by Laura Poitras that features imagery and sound made in the weeks after 9/11 in the Kreps Gallery, through October 22 Center for Documentary Studies
August 8–13 Hearing Is Believing II
For students who have gathered sound and are ready to produce a four- to tenminute audio documentary
For continuing education students who would like more information about CDS courses and equipment
A celebration of Jim Dow’s new book, American Studies Center for Documentary Studies
September 11, 1 and 3 p.m. Rebirth A Full Frame Film Festival screening in honor of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 Nasher Museum of Art
September 19 Daylight/CDS Photo Awards
Solo and group exhibitions of the 2011 winners in the Porch and University Galleries, through December 22 Center for Documentary Studies
Center for Documentary Studies
September 20, 7 p.m. Gallery Talk by Laura Poitras
August 12, 9 p.m. Full Frame Movies on the Lawn
Center for Documentary Studies
A summer series of outdoor screenings presented by the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival American Tobacco Campus, downtown Durham, NC
In conjunction with the CDS exhibition of her installation O’ Say Can You See
In conjunction with exhibitions featuring the 2011 Daylight/CDS Photo Awards Winners
A weekend matinee marathon presented by the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Songs and stories of the 1961 Freedom Riders, written and directed by Mike Wiley PlayMakers Repertory Company UNC–Chapel Hill
October 27, 7 p.m. John Akomfrah Lecture
An award-winning British film director and screenwriter discusses his work Nasher Museum of Art
November 10, 5:30 p.m. Benjamin Lowy
Winner of the CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography talks about his book Iraq | Perspectives Rare Book Room, Perkins Library, West Campus