DOCUMENT SPRING/SUMMER 2016 | THE CENTER FOR DOCUMENTARY STUDIES AT DUKE UNIVERSITY
Center for Documentary Studies
AT DUKE UNIVERSITY
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a Publication of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
919-660-3663 | Fax: 919-681-7600 | docstudies@duke.edu | documentarystudies.duke.edu Director: Wesley C. Hogan Associate Director for Programs and Development: Lynn McKnight Publishing Director: Alexa Dilworth Web Design and Production Manager: Whitney Baker
Art Director: Bonnie Campbell Communications Director and Document Editor: Elizabeth Phillips Social Media and Digital Projects Manager: Jenna Strucko
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: View from courtyard behind the Big House to Little Pisgah Mountain, September 2005. Photograph by Ken Abbott, from Useful Work: Photographs of Hickory Nut Gap Farm (see page 4).
CONTENTS STORYMAKERS: DURHAM 3 Citizen Storytellers Reflect On One of the South’s Most Diverse Cities EXHIBITIONS 4–5 Useful Work: Photographs of Hickory Nut Gap Farm By Ken Abbott Where We Live: A North Carolina Portrait Photographs by Alex Harris, Amanda Berg, Rachel Boillot, and Jennifer Stratton Beyond the Front Porch 2016 Certificate in Documentary Studies Capstone Projects
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6 Public Studio Residencies at the Power Plant Gallery
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FILM 7 2016 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival Highlights AWARDS 8–9 2016 CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography EDUCATION 10–15 Undergraduate Education 2016 Certificate in Documentary Studies Graduates Continuing Education 2016 Certificate in Documentary Arts Graduates Fall Course Preview
Certificate Student Spotlight Katie Fernelius and David Morrow MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts Congratulations to the Class of 2016
FROM THE CENTER Kinships form not only through bloodlines but storylines. In this issue of Document, we share some of the remarkable ways that documentarians explore and build kinship through their work. John Biewen, Alex Harris, and upcoming artists at the Juanita Kreps and Power Plant Galleries explore the ties that bind us to place. Our students bring their worlds into CDS with them, and then move that knowledge outward as they tell us about places both near and far from Durham. This year’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival renewed the bonds among makers and audiences, knitting together a civic landscape of dialogue and visual story-sharing that acquired a particularly important resonance as an oasis in a national and international climate full of barbed strife and saber-rattling. Carolyn Forché once imagined a post-Hiroshima scene where, “by way of a vanished bridge we cross this river.” Documentary work, in these pages, brings the vanished bridges between us into existence—through extraordinary makers, teachers, and students willing to imagine new ways forward. We at the Center are also imagining new ways forward as an institution. Document is going on hiatus for the next twelve months. In that time, we have an opportunity to develop a lab for innovation in documentary publishing, and our communications team will be using that time to explore how best to share both traditions and recent inventions in documentary in new formats. Look for us to be sharing these new imaginaries with you in the coming year. —CDS director Wesley Hogan
@ CDSDuke
STORYMAKERS: DURHAM
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torymakers: Durham is a collaboration between producer John Biewen, CDS’s audio program director and host of its Scene on Radio podcast; North Carolina Public Radio–WUNC; SpiritHouse, Inc., a black women–led arts and advocacy group in Durham, North Carolina; and the people of Durham. The project is one of fifteen in Localore: Finding America, the latest public-media initiative from the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR). Each of the new projects pairs an independent producer with a local radio or television station to invent new storytelling models with and for communities that public media doesn’t typically reach. The final result of Storymakers: Durham will be a series of short audio documentaries conceived and produced by citizen storytellers— Storymakers. Storymakers: Durham invites people in one strikingly diverse city to reflect on the forces that unite and divide us. The project has made an important turn into its second exciting phase, but let me take you back to Phase 1—a series of Story Circle events across Durham hosted by Storymakers partner SpiritHouse, Inc.; TROSA, the renowned substance abuse treatment program; Trinity School, a private Christian school in southwest Durham; the Levin Jewish Community Center; and Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, which has many hundreds of Latino parishioners. By design, these events were relatively small—twenty-five people or fewer—and drew from representative parts of the community. Some of the events were quite homogeneous, others more diverse, but collectively, the people who turned out looked like Durham: black, white, Latino, and Asian; religious and secular; professional and working class; financially comfortable and struggling. So, what’s a Story Circle? It’s a process developed by John O’Neal, a former civil rights activist with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and founder of the Free Southern Theater. The concept was brought to Storymakers by our partners Nia Wilson and Mya Hunter of SpiritHouse. Led by Nia and Mya, at each event small circles of about five people were given a prompt: Tell a story, in two minutes or less, about a time when you had an advantage. The prompt could elicit something quite benign: “I like to hear music in bars, and I have the advantage of being tall so I can see the band over the
heads of others.” Or something more serious: “I was pulled over for speeding and realized I didn’t have to worry much about how the officer would treat me because I have the advantage of being white.” Many of the stories, though brief, opened moving and revealing windows into a storyteller’s past or current life situation. The white businesswoman who felt that her “shitty childhood” and her experience in the military had toughened her for a life of success; the Latino man who said that as an auto mechanic in a Durham shop otherwise staffed by whites, he was asked to do more than his share of work for the same pay. After the stories were told, we went around the circle again, with each person reflecting briefly on what (s)he had taken away from others’ stories. We had two things in mind with this phase of the project: First, to get Durham residents together to speak and to hear one another—in person. The feedback at the sessions was resoundingly positive. As Ruthie LyleCannon put it at the Trinity School circle, “You realize people are very similar. You walk in . . . and you think, I don’t know anybody in this room. And now you feel like, ‘Hey, now that I know you, let’s go for coffee.’” The second goal of the Story Circles was to find storytellers. We identified several people at each event and invited them to participate in Phase 2 of the project—not because of the content of the story they told, but because of how they told it. And also, in some cases, because of the way they listened and connected with those around them. We chose fifteen people based on the hunch that as Storymakers, they would do something interesting. As I write this, in early April, we’re a month into the Storymakers’ training process here at CDS. March was a time of listening to pieces for inspiration (mostly past CDS student pieces), getting acquainted with recording equipment and mic’ing techniques both for sitdown interviews and “scene” recording, and shaping story ideas that explore themes such as race, class, immigration, gentrification, and disability. I’ve asked folks to think of April as recording month; in May, we’ll pull those pieces together and make radio. The outcome? Sometime in late spring and early summer, these citizen-produced audio pieces will begin to show up on WUNC and on the CDS podcast, Scene on Radio. Stay tuned. —John Biewen
y storymakersdurham.org John Biewen (far right) speaks at a Story Circle event at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church gym. Video still by Ian McClerin.
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Citizen-Produced Radio Docs Explore Community Issues
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EXHIBITIONS
Useful Work Photographs of Hickory Nut Gap Farm By Ken Abbott CDS’s Juanita Kreps Gallery | June 2–September 10, 2016 Reception and Artist’s Talk: August 18, 6–9 p.m. It has an altitude of 2,700 feet so you can imagine how fine the air is & it is just at the crest of one of the Blue Ridge ranges with a most superb view across the valley at the mountains in the distance. —Elizabeth McClure to her cousin Martha Clarke, 1916
The images document the objects and actions of day-today life at the Big House and land, “where the now collides so propitiously with the then,” as a review on the Aperture blog puts it—rugs hang over a fence to dry, flowers and eggs are gathered, a battered silver pitcher that belonged to Elizabeth McClure, still used every day to bring water from the springhouse, sits on the kitchen counter. The latter photograph distilled for Abbott “one of the great lessons” of his time at Hickory Nut Gap Farm: “That we should honor beauty and our past and reach for intimacy with our given place. Like a camera lens the pitcher focuses the family story. Yet in the photograph of it, we are also reminded that there are dishes to wash and work to do.”
On a honeymoon trip to western North Carolina in 1916, Elizabeth and Jim McClure visited a place then known as Sherrill’s Inn; they were entranced, so much so that they purchased the inn and surrounding land, rechristening it Hickory Nut Gap Farm. A hundred years later, the “Big House” and property remains a vibrant home and community hub where five generations of McClures and extended family have visited, lived, and worked the land. Photographer Ken Abbott first visited in 2004 on his daughter’s class field trip, and was as taken with the site as the McClures had been decades earlier. “The place had a time-capsule quality,” he writes, “but it was clearly no museum—there were signs of a busy contemporary life, with a story of its own to tell. . . . It was a beautiful setting, rich in lore, and I looked forward to coming back with my camera.” Abbott’s photographs, taken between 2004 and 2009, are featured in the traveling exhibition and book Useful Work: Photographs of Hickory Nut Gap Farm (Goosepen Studio & Press, 2015, with essays by Ken Neufeld). TOP AND BOTTOM: A farm truck loaded with flowers for the market, September 2008. A pitcher from Elizabeth McClure’s wedding silver, July 2006. Photographs by Ken Abbott. OPPOSITE, top to bottom: Halifax County, 2015; photograph by Jennifer Stratton. Juke joint, Camden, 1972; photograph by Alex Harris. Jackson County, 2014; photograph by Rachel Boillot. Ginger Phelps at work in Massey Hill, 2015; photograph by Amanda Berg.
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Where We Live
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A North Carolina Portrait
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Photographs by Alex Harris, Amanda Berg, Rachel Boillot, and Jennifer Stratton Rubenstein Photography Gallery, Rubenstein Library, Duke University | Through June 26, 2016 In the fall of 1971, under the auspices of the new Public Policy program at Duke University, documentary photographer Alex Harris began his first assignment: to photograph substandard housing and living conditions in North Carolina. In 2014, with support from the Annenberg Foundation, the CDS cofounder turned to three former students and recent graduates of Duke’s MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts program to tackle the same broad assignment—photographers Amanda Berg, Rachel Boillot, and Jennifer Stratton. Where We Live: A North Carolina Portrait features Harris’s 1971–72 work and Berg, Boillot, and Stratton’s contemporary portraits of, respectively, women whose factory jobs disappeared as industries closed, migrant workers who harvest Christmas trees and pick crops, and low-income neighborhoods that habitually bear the brunt of environmental damage. “Forty-four years separate these photographs,” writes Harris. “By exhibiting together, we hope to show some of the ways in which the State of North Carolina has changed during this period. Our different styles and approaches with a camera also hint at how the practice of documentary photography has developed. But some things remain constant. Our photographs then and now show the human dimensions of policy issues, not only connecting these issues to individual lives, but, we hope, giving a sense of our own kinship to the people portrayed.” Where We Live is sponsored by Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, Archive of Documentary Arts at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Forum for Scholars and Publics, Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts program, and Sanford School of Public Policy. Project funding was provided by Anne Reynolds Forsyth, the Annenberg Foundation, and the Duke Council for the Arts. All photographs will be preserved in the Archive of Documentary Arts.
BEYOND THE FRONT PORCH 2016 Certificate in Documentary Studies Capstone Projects
CDS’s University Gallery | Through October 1, 2016 This exhibit features six large prints that represent the final projects of six college seniors who in May 2016 received a CDS Certificate in Documentary Studies, a program of coursework culminating in a Documentary Capstone Seminar completed during the fall or spring semester of the students’ final year. See pages 10–11 for more information on the students and their projects.
Find out more about CDS at documentarystudies.duke.edu
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# PPGArtists
Public Studio Residencies at the Power Plant Gallery
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his summer, the Power Plant Gallery, a joint initiative of the Center for Documentary Studies and MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts program at Duke University, inaugurates a residency program for individual artists and artist groups. Three separate one-month public studio residencies will be held in June, July, and August at the 1,500-square-foot gallery, located at the historic American Tobacco Campus in downtown Durham. A laboratory for documentary and experimental art practices, the Power Plant Gallery promotes creative work while engaging with audiences through the transformative power of the arts in society. In this spirit, the gallery will hold open hours Thursdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m.–6 p.m. during the summer residencies to foster public interest in the art-making process, not just the final product. Artists-in-residence will be encouraged to engage with the public during open hours, exploring the full relationship between artist and audience, and will have full access to the gallery space during the rest of the week. Congratulations to the #PPGArtists 2016:
JUNE | WILLIAM PAUL THOMAS Mood Swings | Multimedia Portrait Series in Two Parts: TEEF: Good for the Soul (video) and Black & Blue (painting) “In the midst of all the turmoil and rampant violence happening around the country, I think it is imperative that we all identify creative strategies to counter negative energy with life-affirming interventions. For the past two years, I have been collecting short audio clips from men recounting personal moments of happiness. I have recorded some of these men smiling as long as they can before it becomes
CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Painting by William Paul Thomas; photograph by MJ Sharp; a qUest installation.
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unbearable. My goal is to compose a series of enigmatic and endearing living portraits that stitch together the lives of a diverse group of people using their own words.”
JULY | MJ SHARP In Place (working title) | Achival Photography Project “I have documented my family for thirty years and have published and shown many of those individual photographs over the years, but I have never before been struck by an idea to combine them into one art piece. My initial impulse, which may evolve as I get more deeply into it, is to find compelling images of similar vantage points over decades and combine them in such a way that they blend all the temporal realities portrayed in the pictures.”
AUGUST | qUest: NINA BE, ISABEL CASTELLVI, SHALEIGH COMERFORD, CATHERINE HOWARD, STACY KIRBY, AND MADELYN SOVERN Meditations on Echos of Breath | Multimedia Experience “This artists’-collaborative project will be a series of dynamic and interactive ‘living canvases’ expressing the many aspects of breathing, and how breath affects and is affected by individual states of being within different environments. Meditative spaces and situations for artists and viewers will be intentionally created to support connection to that which is breathing, has ever breathed, and will breathe, as echoes that affect present reality. The ability to ‘focus and feel’ is the shared artistic theme, with an underlying theme of ‘nontoxic’ nourishing breath being examined in reference to our work being housed in a ‘power plant.’”
y powerplantgallery.org/PPGArtists
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The 2016 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
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he nineteenth annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, a program of CDS, was held April 7–10 in downtown Durham, North Carolina, and presented screenings of nearly one hundred short and featurelength nonfiction films from around the world. Recently completed works, selected from over eighteen hundred submissions, screened as part of Full Frame’s NEW DOCS and Invited Programs. The festival also honored acclaimed cinematographer and director Kirsten Johnson with its Full Frame Tribute, and filmmaker R.J. Cutler curated this year’s Thematic Program, “Perfect and Otherwise: Documenting American Politics.” Full Frame hosted screenings of thirteen World Premieres, six North American Premieres, and two U.S. Premieres. World Premieres included Two Trains Runnin’, directed by Sam Pollard, the North Carolina–set Raising Bertie, directed by Margaret Byrne, and I, Destini, a short film codirected by Nicholas Pilarski, a graduate of Duke University’s MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts, and Destini Riley, a Durham resident and alumna of Full Frame’s annual School of Doc filmmaking summer camp. Additionally, Full Frame held six industry panel conversations at the A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy. All of the conversations are available online (see webpage below). The Reva and David Logan Grand Jury Award went to Starless Dreams, directed by Mehrdad Oskouei. The Jury—Rachel Boynton, Margaret Brown, and Ricki Stern—stated, “This film took us into a world we are not normally privileged to see. Through this deceptively simple look inside a juvenile correctional facility for girls, we were given a window into modern Iranian society. Beautifully crafted with tenderness and enormous respect for the people in it, this film left us with a bracing emotional punch.” Starless Dreams also won the Full Frame Inspiration Award, for the film that best exemplifies the value and relevance of world religions and spirituality.
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Maxim Pozdorovkin’s Clínica de Migrantes: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which had its World Premiere at Full Frame, won the Jury Award for Best Short, granting the film eligibility for Academy Award® consideration in the category of Documentary Short Subject. The Jury—Amy Foote, Davina Pardo, and Chad A. Stevens—stated, “With extraordinary access and moving vérité footage, Clínica de Migrantes takes us on an emotional journey with the staff and patients at a volunteerrun clinic where undocumented immigrants receive medical care, and addresses a critical issue in a way that is so human and real that we unanimously agreed it must be awarded this year’s Best Short Award.” The Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award, juried by CDS representatives and presented to documentary artists whose works are potential catalysts for education and change, went to Sonita, directed by Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami. This film follows an Afghani refugee living in Iran who fights to keep her dream of becoming a rap star alive as her family attempts to sell her as a bride. CDS director Wesley Hogan said, “This year’s winner achieved something important and rare: it made the members of the jury see themselves in both the subject and the filmmaker. The jury identified with the subject’s intense desire to achieve her dream as well as the complex and emotional decision the filmmaker had to make on whether to intervene.” fullframefest.org y fullframefest.org > Films + Events > Speakeasy Conversations
OTHER 2016 FULL FRAME AWARDS Special Jury Mention Gleason, Clay Tweel. Within weeks of being diagnosed with ALS, former NFL defensive back Steve Gleason finds out that he and his wife are expecting their first child. Gleason follows his decision to live, for his family and others fighting the disease. Full Frame Audience Award FEATURE: Life, Animated, Roger Ross Williams. The family of an autistic boy discovered a way to communicate with him through his treasured Disney films, transforming lines of animated characters into a language of love. SHORT: Pickle, Amy Nicholson. At once hilarious and heartfelt, Pickle chronicles a series of pets with bizarre afflictions through the recollections of the couple who loved them regardless. Charles E. Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award Call Me Marianna, Karolina Bielawska. As she embarks on a quest to become herself, Polish transgender woman Marianna must summon inner strength and make immeasurable sacrifices. Full Frame President’s Award The Mute’s House, Tamar Kay. The film provides an intimate look into the lives of energetic eight-year-old Yousef and his deaf mother, Sahar, the last Palestinian residents of a deserted apartment building in Hebron. Kathleen Bryan Edwards Award for Human Rights Kiki, Sara Jordenö. This entrance into the world of voguing contrasts the energy and pulse of ball culture with the intimate and emotional stories of a group of young LGBTQ people of color.
I, Destini codirector Destini Riley, of Durham, North Carolina, at the film’s post-screening Q&A. Photograph by Alex Boerner.
Find out more about CDS at documentarystudies.duke.edu
Benjamin Lowy, Iraq | Perspectives, 2010
Jennette Williams, The Bathers, 2008
CDS / HONICKMAN FIRST BOOK PRIZE IN PHOTOGRAPHY
Larry Schwarm, On Fire, 2002
2016
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“We find ourselves at a moment when ph cause they are concrete statements of a the ‘Ocean of Images’ that we swim throug portant expression of this need for paper Honickman First Book Prize is another, an ous platform for serious work by photograp they deserve. I’m pleased and excited to b
—Peter Barberie, Brodsky Alfred Stieglitz Center at the Judge, 2016 CDS/Honickman F
Gerard H. Gaskin, Legendary: Inside the House Ballroom Scene, 2012
Danny Wilcox Frazier, Driftless: Photographs from Iowa, 2006
hoto books are as important as ever, beartistic vision, essential counterweights in gh every day. DIY photo books are one imand glue and composed ideas. The CDS/ nd it is immensely valuable. It offers a seriphers who have not yet received the notice be involved with the 2016 competition.�
Nadia Sablin, Aunties, 2015
Steven B. Smith, The Weather and a Place to Live, 2004
y Curator of Photographs, Philadelphia Museum of Art First Book Prize in Photography
Submissions accepted June 15 to September 15, 2016
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EDUCATION Undergraduate Education
2016 Certificate in Documentary Studies Graduates Six Duke University seniors in the Class of 2016 received a CDS Certificate in Documentary Studies in a ceremony at CDS on May 1, where the students presented their final documentary projects and celebrated the opening of Beyond the Front Porch 2016, an exhibition of their work on view at CDS through October 1, 2016. Students in the Documentary Capstone Seminar have the fall or spring semester of their senior year to complete a photographic, video, audio, or multimedia project that is meant to be the culmination of their coursework at the Center for Documentary Studies and their four years at Duke. This year’s class studied either in the fall with Nancy Kalow or in the spring with Alex Harris. They tackled projects— womanhood at Duke, the role of music in our lives, how we express or hide our emotions, identity and athletics, global citizenship, and tuberculosis in Tibetan refugee communities in India—that might be reasonable to complete if these students weren’t also enrolled in three or four other courses, weren’t also involved in various local and national causes, and weren’t also taking the time to maintain Duke friendships that for some will last the rest of their lives. In completing these capstone projects, students are showing the one quality that is most difficult to achieve for any documentary artist bombarded with life’s daily distractions alongside news of huge and complex problems facing society: they are taking themselves and their own work seriously. This is the quality they will need in order to move beyond university life, to remain aware of the big picture while maintaining focus on the particular subjects and issues they themselves consider to be of vital importance. —Alex Harris, Duke Professor of the Practice of Public Policy and Documentary Studies; Nancy Kalow, Instructor, Center for Documentary Studies
mates involved in Duke athletics. I am creating a portrait of sports that explores a different side to athletics than is usually told, a story that relates to the broader themes of change, growing up, and adapting when things don’t go as planned.
RINCHEN DOLMA Amdo, Tibet | International Comparative Studies Early in my sophomore year, I fell in love with the art of storytelling. That was when I started to explore photography and documentary narrative. After taking many classes at CDS, I started to see the world through a more critical lens. I came to recognize the crucial roles each of us plays in the lives of other people. My capstone project, Anywhere and Everywhere, is a video documentary project about the high prevalence of tuberculosis (TB) in the Tibetan refugee communities in India. Through the stories of patients and health workers at Delek Hospital, a Tibetan hospital located in northern India, I look into the day-today struggles of TB patients and their battles—despite limited resources—against the disease. This documentary shows that TB goes beyond its biomedical implications; its complexities are related to politics as well as other social, cultural, and economic conditions. Without knowing about those conditions—the real-life situations of individuals— it is impossible to eradicate or minimize the rate of TB. Through my film, I hope to show that compassion and the intimate relationship between health workers and patients at Delek are among the key factors helping to combat TB in the Tibetan community in India.
ISABELLA BARNA Bend, Oregon | Visual and Media Studies I am an artist, designer, and storyteller whose combination of life experiences and academics has led me to create work influenced by the environment, human emotion, and an exploration of the Anthropocene. Working from these focal points, I have created images and digital media in an attempt to capture moments of the human condition deeply rooted in nature. I believe that my work ultimately illustrates the intersection of the self with contemporary culture and the environment. In my capstone project I depart from my previous style and subject matter and take a very personal approach to storytelling: I examine my past four years as a varsity athlete at Duke by collecting and editing my own story and the stories of friends and class-
Visit us on CDS Porch, our news blog: cdsporch.org
KATIE FERNELIUS Rancho Santa Margarita, California | Global Cultural Studies The Center for Documentary Studies was my first home at Duke. Before I deliberately joined any groups, before I declared a major, before I covered my laptop with a deluge of stickers, I stumbled into a CDS classroom and into some of the most fulfilling relationships and passions of my life. In this home, I discovered that documentary work is a mode of inquiry that challenges my own conceptions of what is true and who gets to speak their truths. Engaging in documentary work has invigorated my intellectual journey in other disciplines, including literature and critical
cate to merging these two interests through the Certificate in Documentary Studies program at CDS. I began my journey into the exploration of documentary studies based on a suggestion by one of my first-semester professors, Charlie Thompson. Through my CDS courses, I have been able to develop my own focus on documentary photography and to translate the stories I hear and the events I observe into images and words. I’ve come to better understand people while also understanding more about myself, which has been one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned from the program. In my final capstone project, Musical Memoirs, I explore how each person’s favorite song affects their emotions and is tied to specific memories. Through photography and interviews, I was able to explore important moments in other people’s lives while also thinking about how music affected, and still affects, my own life. The culmination of my capstone project is a website that combines both visual and audio components and allows for the exploration of other people’s stories while reflecting on one’s own life playlist.
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theory. During my time at Duke, I became invested in a particular question—”Who is a citizen?”—and the stakes of that question for different people around the world. For my capstone project, rhapsody, I traveled to seven different cities around the world and interviewed individuals about love, community, and global citizenship. I wanted to explore the same questions I’m asking in my classes, but to include those who are often excluded from these types of conversations. My final product is a mix of audio documentary work, critical theory, and personal essay.
DARBI GRIFFITH Dayton, Ohio | Biology/Premed; Music minor I had no idea what documentary studies entailed prior to coming to Duke, but it’s amazing how one class changed everything. My freshman seminar with Bill Bamberger introduced me to the realm of documentary studies, and I quickly developed my passion for documentary arts. I have expanded my knowledge of photography and journalism through classes at CDS and by working with Duke’s studentrun paper, The Chronicle. While I have studied various forms of documentary media, I unexpectedly found myself completing my capstone project in an experimental genre, something very new for me. The Soapbox is an experimental documentary—an audio collage of Duke undergraduates’ individual responses to the question, “How are you?” The collage weaves the monologues into dialogues about common themes and emotions; these dialogues play in the background to video of four dancers improvising in response to the individual stories. The project reveals the complex thoughts and emotions behind our typically rote responses, creating a dance of voices and movement that comes close to the chaos of emotions that we truly feel. I’d like to thank all of my CDS instructors—John Biewen, Bill Bamberger, Nancy Kalow, Susie Post-Rust, Katie Hyde, and Alex Harris—for sharing their knowledge of the documentary tradition.
SOPHIE TURNER Los Angeles, California | Visual and Media Studies; Women’s Studies I fell in love with the visual storytelling power of photography in high school, and the classes I have taken over the last four years at CDS have deepened and intensified my interest in the documentary arts. My coursework and my involvement in the fellowship program at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival have transformed my interest in photography into a passion for all things documentary. For my capstone project, I set out to debunk the myth of “effortless perfection,” the pressure that plagues so many young women at Duke to be smart, attractive, fit, and popular without visible effort. I created a series of intimate portraits of young women getting ready for bed at night in the privacy of their own rooms. By creating a body of work that features these women free from makeup, fashion, and the superficial elements that perpetuate the illusion of perfection, I hope to show the beauty and value of our essential selves.
ON VIEW THROUGH OCTOBER 1
BETSY MANSFIELD Ann Arbor, Michigan | Biology; Certificate in Marine Science and Conservation Leadership I realize now that I was unbelievably naïve when I first came to Duke. I thought I knew what to expect, but I had no idea what was to come during the next four years. I entered with a love of photography and a passion for people and their stories, but hadn’t made a connection between the two. Little did I know how much time I would dedi-
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Visit CDS and enjoy representative work from final projects by these six Duke students who recently received an undergraduate Certificate in Documentary Studies. Beyond the Front Porch 2016, an exhibition of large-scale prints and project statements, is on display in the University Gallery at the Center for Documentary Studies. Congratulations and best of luck to Isabella Barna, Rinchen Dolma, Katie Fernelius, Darbi Griffith, Betsy Mansfield, and Sophie Turner.
documentarystudies.duke.edu/classes/undergraduate-education
Find out more about CDS at documentarystudies.duke.edu
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Continuing Education 2016 Certificate in Documentary Arts Graduates The Center for Documentary Studies offers Continuing Education classes to people of all backgrounds. Some enroll in the Certificate in Documentary Arts program, a structured sequence of courses culminating in a final seminar and the completion of a substantial project. In May 2016, the following students—all but one of whom was in the distance-learning program—presented their final projects to the public at a certificate ceremony in the Full Frame Theater. Congratulations to our spring 2016 graduates, and best wishes for their future work. Saro Lynch-Thomason is a ballad singer, illustrator, and audio storyteller living in Asheville, North Carolina. She shares stories of America’s labor and environmental histories through multimedia projects and performances. As a child, she says, she was raised with vivid recollections of her Appalachian Civil War ancestors—stories “of desperation, anger, and betrayal: of cousins hung in their front yards by the home guard and inlaws committing suicide from depression. Honor is an effort to lay my family’s Civil War ghosts to rest through an exploration of the ways Appalachians remember and tell stories about this bloody conflict.” The audio piece shares voices from Confederate reenactors in Virginia and storytellers in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. Kris Dyson teaches digital media, game design, computer programming, and television production in the Information Communication Technology Academy at Christa McAuliffe Middle School in Boynton Beach, Florida. She is an advocate for gifted and talented students, having spent ten years as an educator in the field. Gifted females, she says, “often lack appropriate guidance, enrichment experiences, mentoring, and understanding.” For her multimedia project, The Gifted Girl Chronicles, Kris collected oral histories from girls and women who have been labeled “gifted and talented” during their educational experiences, exploring “how they navigate the social, emotional, and academic landscapes of their lives. What causes some girls to succeed where others stumble? How has the gifted label shaped their life choices or defined them as people?” Tom Dierolf has lived in Brevard, North Carolina, since 2004. He worked in rural community development for twenty-five years in Southeast Asia, Melanesia, and Appalachia, and is now in the midst of a career change. His short film Almost Cured tells the story of the 1963 Brevard High School Blue Devils, a racially integrated high school football team that went on to win the State 3A championship. In a year of great civil unrest that saw the Birmingham church bombing, the murder of Medgar Evers, and the March on Washington, Tom says, “a small Southern Appalachian county . . . that was, and remains, more than 93 percent white, was able to peacefully integrate even before the many urban areas of the state.” The documentary includes interviews with the coach, players, fans, and others, along with present-day footage and archival photos, film, and print media. Rebecca Williams is a writer, director, educator, and artist who has facilitated community-based arts and cultural development projects for the past twenty-five years in Virginia, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and North Carolina. She currently shoots and edits short digital stories for artists, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits with Mountain Girl Media. Her first documentary film, Blanket Town: The Rise and Fall of an American Mill Town, is about the Beacon Blanket Mill and the people who worked there. Described as the “big red thumping heart” of Swannanoa, North Carolina, Beacon was once the largest manufacturer of blankets in the world. Rebecca’s film “looks at what happens to a small mountain community when it loses its manufacturing base, and its heart,” she says.
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Dana Endsley is a visual artist, activist, workshop facilitator, and holistic bodywork therapist living in Mount Holly, North Carolina. Her film One Last Stand tells the story of a 2015 reunion of former high school band members to honor their director—Paul “Prof” Semicek—and to perform again as “The Mounties.” In the late 1950s Prof was hired as band director for Mount Carmel High School in northeastern Pennsylvania—the heart of the Coal Region. Dana says, “Prof affected thousands of kids’ lives and showed them a world they would have never seen. Through his vision, talent, and unending work, he created a world-class marching band from a group of rag-tag working-class kids.” During Prof’s tenure, the Mounties performed at multiple venues and events on the East Coast and in Canada.
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graphs instead explores what the everyday means for Palestinians and Israelis living day to day, side by side, in order to understand the undefined times and spaces of ‘uneventfulness’ but without overlooking the tense politics at hand.”
FALL COURSE PREVIEW Each spring and fall, the CDS Continuing Education program (CDS Courses) offers around forty classes in the documentary arts, a constantly changing roster of one-day or weekend workshops and multi-week courses offered in the evening and on weekends. A selection of new classes offered for the first time this coming fall is listed below; registration for fall 2016 will open in late May. (As of early May, registration was still open for our renowned summer intensives.) AUDIO The Non-Narrated Radio Voice | Online Sarah Reynolds Learn how to construct a more intimate audio story by foregoing narration. PHOTOGRAPHY From Concept to Gallery George Entenman, Durward Rogers, Barbara Tyroler Take an image from initial concept to final exhibition print. Visual Storytelling on Instagram | Online Sarah Stacke Shape a story idea, edit, and present a photo essay on Instagram. Photography as a Second Language Bryce Lankard Learn basic photography skills. (For documentarians working in other media.)
Hether Hoffmann is an artist, paddler, kayak coach, and documentarian from Chicago. She teaches art at Quest Academy in Palatine, Illinois, and is a Current Designs–sponsored sea kayaker. Paddling in Spite of the Ordinary: Bonnie A. Perry, Agency and Grace is part of her documentary series about two women sea kayakers from Chicago; the series “explores how women sea kayakers aspire to accomplish their paddling goals while exploring themes of spirituality, social justice, challenge, community, and acceptance,” says Hether. Her film about Bonnie Perry delves into “the spirituality of water and life balance through paddling, sport, and sermons.” Perry is an expert canoe instructor/trainer and a Wilderness First Responder who is also the senior pastor at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Chicago. Christopher J. Lee is a scholar currently based at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He will be an associate professor of history at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania beginning this summer. Hours of an Age: AntiPhotojournalism and Everyday Life in Palestine focuses on life in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and “seeks to challenge the dominant themes of photojournalism in Israel/Palestine with its imagery of stone-throwing Palestinian youth in conflict with Israeli soldiers,” Christopher says. “This series of photo-
VIDEO Corporate Documentary: The Next Big Thing Josh Dasal Tap into a new field of paid work—content creation for businesses that use a documentary approach in their marketing materials. WRITING Writing About Grief Leslie Maxwell Convert an abstract emotion into concrete description on the page. SPECIAL TOPICS Installations Mendal Polish Focusing on Durham, create an installation piece in a medium of your choice for a group show.
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OPPOSITE, top to bottom: From projects by Saro Lynch-Thomason, Kris Dyson, Tom Dierolf, and Hether Hoffmann. ABOVE, top to bottom: From projects by Rebecca Williams, Dana Endsley, and Christopher J. Lee.
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Certificate Student Spotlight
Julia Harper Day Award Winner Katie Fernelius
Continuing Education Student David Morrow
The Julia Harper Day Award was created by the Center for Documentary Studies in 1992 in memory of the young woman who was CDS’s first staff member, a writer and photographer of real accomplishment. This $500 award goes to a graduating Duke University senior who has demonstrated excellence in documentary studies and contributed significantly to CDS programs. The 2016 Julia Harper Day Award goes to Katie Jane Fernelius, a global cultural studies major. Katie is also graduating with a CDS Certificate in Documentary Studies (see pages 10–11), for which she completed a final project; rhapsody is her multimodal work that explores the question, “Who is a citizen?,” and the stakes of that question for different people around the world. For her project, Katie traveled to seven different cities around the world and interviewed individuals about love, community, and global citizenship. She wanted to pose the same questions she was asking in her classes to people who are often excluded from those types of conversations. For Katie, documentary work challenges her own conceptions of what is true and who gets to speak their own truths, and is a mode of inquiry that enhances her other intellectual pursuits, including literature and critical theory. After graduation, she plans to continue to write and produce audio documentary work. Kelly Alexander, a CDS instructor, writes: “I have known Katie for three years. In that time, I have come to respect a young woman who is a talented writer and a deeply curious student of the world. She is driven to document the stories of her subjects in a way that is respectful, authentic, and original. As a close supervisor of much of her work during these years, I have vetted her projects and helped her develop storytelling techniques across the genres of writing/reporting and online journalism. Katie has consistently personified the kind of engagement in documentary studies that John Grierson described when he coined the term for the field: She is interested in history, stories, responsibility and representation, and a focused study of the social and cultural forces that shape modern life. I particularly appreciate her engagement with women’s rights and youth activism in general.” In addition to her success in the documentary field, Katie coordinated School Days, an annual program where three hundred local eighth-graders who will be first-generation college students visit Duke’s campus. She was also an editor of The Chronicle, Duke’s independent student newspaper, as well as coeditor-in-chief of The Archive, a literary magazine published each semester.
CDS Continuing Education coordinator Marc Maximov describes how a student’s work has been shaped by his courses and his pursuit of a Certificate in Documentary Arts:
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David Morrow, who’s been taking Continuing Education classes since February 2015, is the very definition of a lifelong learner: At the time of this writing, he’s taken eight courses, including weekly online classes, weeklong summer institutes, and weekend artist retreats. The fruit of his studies is his ongoing project, Humans of Findlay, which exists as a book and a website, with possibly more manifestations to come. “I’m continually learning,” David said between sessions of this February’s DocuArts Retreat. “I’ve got twenty pages of notes that I’ve taken on audio techniques, on video techniques. One of the stories we did for Humans of Findlay has now morphed into a full-length documentary on a family that’s battling cancer.” Humans of Findlay documents the residents of Findlay, Ohio, in elegant black-and-white photographs and short written interviews. Inspired by photographer Brandon Stanton’s blog and bestselling book, Humans of New York, David began interviewing and photographing his neighbors in April 2014. He put up a simple Facebook page that quickly exploded in popularity, logging tens of thousands of daily visits. David kept up a regimen of interviewing and photographing four or five people a week, and as the project developed, it became more than just a hobby: “The community had started owning it,” he says. After a few months, he decided to look into publishing a book. David discovered CDS during his online research. To workshop his project and get advice on publishing, he enrolled in the Continuing Education certificate program. After attending last February’s DocuArts Retreat, David returned to Durham for the Intensive Introduction to Documentary Studies in June 2015. “The Intro to Doc Studies intensive was instrumental in guiding me, because I had all this information, and I was still gathering and gathering. I was told, ‘Stop—you have enough here, don’t overload yourself,’” he says. He returned to Ohio and with the help of Sarah Sisser, director of the Hancock Historical Museum in Findlay, put together a production team. Humans of Findlay, Vol. I, with a foreword by the mayor, was published in November 2015. “CDS has been instrumental the whole time in allowing me to put this project together,” David says. “I’m excited about finishing up the certificate, but I don’t want to quit!”
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Michael Anthony
Roxanne R. Campbell
Kristina S. Baker
Alex Cunningham
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Tamika Galanis
Qathi Gallaher Hart
Jon-Sesrie Goff
Kihae Kim
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You-Jin Kim
Dan Smith
Jason Oppliger
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Christopher Thomas
Wei Wang
Beatriz Wallace
Kyle Grant Wilkinson
MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts Congratulations to the sixteen students in the Class of 2016. The MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts program celebrated their successes in the annual multi-venue thesis exhibition, MFA | EDA 2016, which featured presentations of film and video, installation, photography, interactive arts, sound, and multimedia. For information on the artists and their work, visit mfaeda2016.org. On-campus supporters for MFA | EDA 2016 included the MFA program’s three founding units—the Center for Documentary Studies, Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies, and Program in Arts of the Moving Image—as well as the Fredric Jameson Gallery, Kenan Institute for Ethics, Louise Jones Brown Gallery, Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts, and Power Plant Gallery. Off-campus supporters included Cassilhaus, The Carrack Modern Art, and SPECTRE Arts.
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