diane nilan / on the edge
March 16, 12-1:30 p.m.
Work-in-Progress Screening & Discussion
Center for Documentary Studies Auditorium
In this brown bag presentation (feel free to bring your lunch), Diane Nilan will present a short excerpt from On the Edge (working title), a film looking at the root causes and human consequences of homelessness. Featuring seven women who lost their housing for a variety of reasons, the film gives a painfully intimate look at the entwined connection between poverty, housing issues, social problems, addictions, family crises, and gender-related injustices. These compelling and forthcoming experts on homelessness shine a bright, unmitigated light on systemic and personal causes of their struggles, illuminating what has been a dark corner of social inaction and concern.
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Photograph by Emily Drakage
exhibition opening
three hours. west main and broad streets. photographs by students in the visual storytelling workshop
Reception: Wednesday, March 10, 5–7 p.m.
Exhibition runs February 27–April 17, 2010
Still documentary photographs are worth a thousand negotiated meanings: They seek to explain how things are, while at the same time offer a photographer’s interpretation of the world. Documentary photography is not objective because photographers are human—subjectivity is inevitable. Photographers and viewers both may become politically engaged, educated, or emotionally involved by creating and/or experiencing these kinds of images.
On September 26, 2009, students enrolled in my Visual Storytelling workshop through the Continuing Education program at the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) photographed the N.C. Pride Parade, a North Carolina–based LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) event held on West Main and Broad Streets, just beyond CDS’s doors. For some, the art of making documentary photographs was new; for others, it was not. But all of the students, regardless of their level of experience, applied the techniques we had reviewed in the two-day workshop when making their images of participants, bystanders, and (a few, but vocal) protesters. People in the parade were members of families, high school and college student groups, local business organizations, and church groups. And as expected, people exercised their First Amendment rights, and debates became heated at times. Law enforcement officials discreetly monitored the events. My students documented these multiple perspectives.
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reality radio: telling true stories in sound
by John Biewen, editor / Alexa Dilworth, coeditor
Published by the University of North Carolina Press and CDS Books at the Center for Documentary Studies
launch event
Saturday, March 6, 2010, 7:30 p.m.
Words on Sound: Book Launch and Signing
With contributors Ira Glass, the Kitchen Sisters, and Joe Richman
Third Coast Filmless Festival
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
220 E. Chicago Avenue, Chicago, Illinois
“A book launch at a radio festival?! You got it. The TCF is thrilled to celebrate the launch of Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound, a brand-new / first-of-its-kind collection of essays written by some of the most accomplished radio producers working today. Re:sound’s Gwen Macsai will join Reality Radio contributors Ira Glass (This American Life), Joe Richman (Radio Diaries) and the Kitchen Sisters (Hidden Kitchens, Lost & Found Sound) for a lively discussion—including lots of audio, of course—about what makes radio stories so damn special. Copies of Reality Radio will be available for purchase at a book signing following the event.”
More about Reality Radio | Purchase Reality Radio
The first issue of the newly-redesigned "Document"
The re-designed Document has launched and is going quarterly! Copies are available now in the front lobby at CDS. Or to be sure you receive every issue, join Friends of CDS.
Behind-the-scenes iPhone photographs of the Document press check by Bonnie Campbell.
Roger Hodge speaking at CDS in 2009. Photograph by Christopher Sims.
“my rise and fall: roger hodge on the state of magazines”
Friday, March 5, 7 p.m.
Center for Documentary Studies Auditorium
Roger Hodge, until recently the editor of Harper’s Magazine, will discuss the prospects of long-form journalism into the future as he recounts his experiences working with writers and offers his perspectives on the shifting landscape in the publishing industry.
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Screen grab from the "North Carolina Now" broadcast
UNC-TV’s “North Carolina Live” feature Mike Wiley’s interpretation of Blood Done Sign My Name from his performance at the Temple Theater in Sanford, N.C., earlier this month. This story also features author Tim Tyson and gospel singer Mary D. Williams, who, like Mike Wiley, are teaching classes this semester at CDS.
watch the video of “north carolina live” on the unc-tv website
Cover of William Eggleston's "2 1/4," Twin Palms Publishers, 2008
william eggleston to judge 2010 cds / honickman first book prize in photography
The Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University and The Honickman Foundation (THF), based in Philadelphia, co-sponsor this prestigious biennial prize for American photographers. The only prize of its kind, the CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography competition is open to American photographers of any age who have never published a book-length work and who use their cameras for creative exploration, whether it be of places, people, or communities; of the natural or social world; of beauty at large or the lack of it; of objective or subjective realities. The prize will honor work that is visually compelling, that bears witness, and that has integrity of purpose.
Judges for the CDS / Honickman First Book Prize in Photography are among the most significant and innovative artists, curators, and writers in contemporary photography. Renowned photographer and writer Robert Adams was the prize’s inaugural judge in 2002. Maria Morris Hambourg, founding curator of the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, judged the second biennial competition (2004). The judge for the third competition (2006) was Robert Frank, one of America’s most important and influential photographers. Celebrated photographer Mary Ellen Mark was the judge of the fourth prize competition (2008).
The winning photographer receives a grant of $3,000, publication of a book of photography, and inclusion in a website devoted to presenting the work of winners of the prize. The judge also writes the introduction for the book, which is published by Duke University Press in association with CDS Books of the Center for Documentary Studies.
submissions for the 2010 competition will be accepted from june 15 to september 8.
more information about the prize: http://cds.aas.duke.edu/bp/index.html
CDS auditorium before Roger Hodge's talk in 2009. Photograph by Christopher Sims.
documentary narrative speaker series: roger hodge (march 5), wells tower (march 19), and rebecca skloot (march 24)
Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
DIRECTIONS: http://cds.aas.duke.edu/about/here.html
All events held at CDS unless otherwise noted.
The Documentary Narrative Speaker Series is presented in conjunction with the CDS course Documentary Writing, taught this spring by Duncan Murrell. The course, along with this speaker series, explores reporting and writing in the long-form documentary tradition.
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"Tree of Life," Amesville, Ohio
still point of the turning world
photographs by frank hunter
On view through June 30, 2010
Reception: Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 5-6 p.m.
Allen Gallery, 2nd floor, Allen Building, West Campus, Duke University
Hosted by Provost Peter Lange
Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.
At the still point of the turning world.
—T. S. Eliot, from “Burnt Norton,” Four Quartets
Frank Hunter, a native of El Paso, Texas, grew up in the desert Southwest. Hunter, who received an M.A. in communications from the University of Colorado and an M.F.A. in photography from Ohio University, teaches the fundamentals of photography and courses in nineteenth-century photographic processes in Art and Documentary Studies at Duke University. His hand-coated platinum/palladium photographs, made with an 8 x 10 view camera, portray the cultural landscape with a singular lyricism.
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Still from "The Yes Men Fix the World"
film screening and discussion
With special guests the Yes Men (Andy Bichlbaum & Mike Bonanno) in person
February 23, 7 p.m.
Griffith Film Theater, West Campus, Duke University
A true story about two gonzo political activists who, posing as top executives of giant corporations, lie their way into big business conferences and pull off the world’s most outrageous pranks. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno are two guys who just can’t take “no” for an answer. They have an unusual hobby: posing as top executives of corporations they hate. Armed with nothing but thrift-store suits, the Yes Men lie their way into business conferences and parody their corporate targets in ever more extreme ways — basically doing everything that they can to wake up their audiences to the danger of letting greed run our world.
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