Tri Star Mobil, 2007

packaged
Photographs by Jessica Silver

On view through mid-December 2009
Reception: Thursday, October 29, 5-6 p.m.
Allen Gallery, 2nd floor, Allen Building, West Campus, Duke University
Hosted by Provost Peter Lange

Seeking out places in Durham where people shop on a daily basis, Jessica Silver takes her camera into spaces we know but seldom look at with consideration or care. A 2008 Duke graduate, Silver writes of her Packaged series: “I wanted to observe the spaces people pass through all the time but don’t really see.” Quietly moving through these stations of commerce and building the immediate trust necessary to make a picture, Silver brings us face to face with the complexity of color, the cacophony of advertisement and display, and the profoundly extraordinary nature of ordinary and mundane moments.

Jessica Silver is currently an associate with the Parthenon Group, a management-consulting firm in Boston. Silver conceived and completed the work for this exhibition in classes with Duke professors Tom Rankin and Alex Harris on the way to earning her Certificate in Documentary Studies and degree in psychology. She received the 2008 Julia Harper Day Award for Documentary Studies, which is presented to a graduating senior who has demonstrated excellence in documentary studies and who has significantly contributed to programs at the Center for Documentary Studies.