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.
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), rebecca skloot (march 24), and wells tower (april 23)
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.
"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.
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.
Gallery visitors at audio/video monitors. Cell phone photograph by Courtney Reid-Eaton.
jazz loft project exhibition at the new york public library for the performing arts at lincoln center
On view through May 22, 2010
View more behind-the-scenes cell phone photographs of the exhibition
More about the Jazz Loft Project at the Center for Documentary Studies
Pelada from Rebekah Fergusson on Vimeo.
pelada (formerly “the soccer project”)
The documentary film, Pelada, directed by former CDS students is headed to the South by Southwest Film Festival next month in Austin, Texas! Congratulations to filmmakers Rebekah Fergusson, Luke Boughen, Gwendolyn Oxenham, and Ryan White. Check out the New York Times soccer blog entry about the film.
southern circuit film screening
trimpin: the sound of invention / peter esmonde
friday, february 19, 7 p.m. (reception beforehand at 6 p.m.)
Center for Documentary Studies
Recipient of a MacArthur Award and many other accolades, Trimpin, who uses only his last name, combines music-making machines and kinetic sculpture with homegrown computer technology. Working six days a week, 12 hours a day, he has no use for galleries and agents, and has neither website nor cell phone – in fact, he agreed to be the subject of this documentary only reluctantly. The film highlights Trimpin’s moments of discovery, relentless problem solving, and eccentric decision making. What results is an amusing, kinetic exploration of a creative genius in perpetual motion.
Trained at Yale University and the American Film Institute Conservatory, filmmaker peter esmonde spent more than a decade working in New York and Los Angeles at various tasks in the film industry: writer, researcher, story analyst, assistant editor, sound editor, associate producer, etc. After toiling as a producer at the Discovery Channel in the mid-1990s, Esmonde was targeted by executive headhunters and spent some years foraging in the corporate jungles of North America. He finally emerged in 2005 as a producer and director of documentary films. Esmonde has also taught film, media, and information design at various American universities. Trimpin: The Sound of Invention is his first documentary feature.
Poster for "Blood Done Sign My Name"
blood done sign my name
Film Based on Book by CDS Professor Opens February 19
Blood Done Sign My Name, an epic civil rights drama based on the acclaimed book of the same name by prize-winning author and scholar Timothy Tyson, will open in select engagements nationwide on February 19, 2010, to coincide with Black History Month. The film, which takes place in Oxford, North Carolina, in the 1970s, explores the racial upheaval—and ensuing social change—provoked by the acquittal of a white father and son accused of murdering a black man in cold blood and in full public view.