william eggleston’s memphis: photographs by joanna welborn
In fall 2008, photographer Joanna Welborn made portraits of William Eggleston at the offices of his archive in Memphis, Tennessee. Welborn joined her sister, Rebecca Bengal, who was researching a profile on Eggleston for New York Magazine, which ran on the occasion of Eggleston’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum. Welborn then spent time photographing throughout Memphis, at some of Eggleston’s favorite haunts as well as making photographs that evoke Eggleston’s own groundbreaking color images.
William Eggleston is the judge for the 2010 CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography competition. Entries for the competition must be postmarked no later than September 8, 2010. For additional information about Eggleston’s work, and to view more of Joanna Welborn’s Memphis photographs, see below.
2008 CDS / Honickman First Book Prize in Photography winner Jennette Williams talks about her process of making the photographs in The Bathers, and Prize Judge Mary Ellen Mark explains what attracted her to Jennette’s work, and the importance of a first book in a photographer’s life.
center for documentary studies announces new internship program
The Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University is accepting applications for nine-month internship positions that will begin in September 2010 and end in May 2011. The interns will gain broad experience in the documentary field, with particular focus on exhibiting, publishing (print and web), and producing a range of materials related to the documentary arts. Two positions are available. (See more detailed descriptions below.) The interns will be based at CDS in Durham, North Carolina, for the 2010-11 academic year.
To qualify, applicants should be recent college graduates (no more than three years out of school) who demonstrate excellent communications abilities, pay careful attention to details, balance initiative and drive with congeniality and team play, show creative talent, and exhibit achievement in some aspect of the documentary arts. CDS internships require a commitment of 30 hours per week, and interns receive a monthly stipend of $1,000.
Interns will be expected to participate as staff colleagues in all CDS activities.
The Center for Documentary Studies offers an interdisciplinary program in the documentary arts—photography, audio, film/video, narrative writing, and other means of creative expression—that emphasizes active engagement in the world beyond the university campus. Much more than a traditional educational center, CDS encourages experiential learning in diverse environments outside the classroom, with an emphasis on the role of individual artistic expression in advancing broader societal goals. Programs range widely to include university undergraduate courses, popular summer institutes that attract students from across the country, international awards competitions, award-winning book publishing and radio programming, exhibitions of new and established artists in our own galleries, and fieldwork projects in the U.S. and abroad. READ MORE: http://cds.aas.duke.edu
To apply to be part of the 2010-11 internship program, send a cover letter, resume, writing sample, one letter of recommendation, and a personal statement of goals and intent for the internship to Lauren Hart at lh90@duke.edu. Please send all materials as electronic files with “internship applicant (applicant’s name) – (exhibitions or publishing)” in the e-mail subject line. Ideally, the recommendation letter should be sent as a PDF directly from the person who is recommending the applicant, with the same information in the e-mail subject line.
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.
“Imagine a vector, a cutaway, of a bath in Turkey and one of a sports club in Manhattan and what the bodies in each would look like at any given moment in time, how they’d be posed, their shapes. Even inside a steam room in the city, we’d sit differently than the ladies in Williams’s images do: farther apart, semi-erect, draped in towels. We are thinner, more muscular. Our notions of privacy are evident in how we sit and in the position of our eyes—cast down, away from other eyes and bodies. The Turkish bathers are engaged, with each other and with the camera.”—Macy Halford [Read more]
pdnpulse: variations on a theme: body image
Jennette Williams’s project is discussed, along with work by Jodi Bieber, Zed Nelson, Jen Davis, and Kerry Mansfield, in the December 11, 2009 blog post from PDN magazine.
perkins library, duke university Audio of Jennette Williams artist’s talk from November 12, 2009 at Perkins Library at Duke University is now available on the CDS iTunes U site (under the “CDS Events” tab).
An exhibition of work from The Weather and a Place to Live, along with Anna Collette’s Dark Landscapes, will be on view November 12, 2009–January 8, 2010, at Sasha Wolf Gallery in New York, NY.
