A Must-See: “Light Sensitive: Photographic Works from North Carolina Collections” Closes May 12
Catch this wonderful exhibit at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University while you can: Light Sensitive: Photographic Works from North Carolina Collections includes over a hundred works, from tiny early daguerreotypes to large-scale contemporary color prints and videos, and is drawn from twelve public and private North Carolina collections. Photographs by Center for Documentary Studies director [...]
CDS Names New Director: Award-Winning Historian Wesley C. Hogan
Originally published on the Duke Today website: Wesley C. Hogan, a historian widely honored for her documentary work on the civil rights movement, has been named the new director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. She begins her appointment on July 1. Hogan will be only the third director of CDS, which was [...]
“One Place” Exhibit Includes Installation of Photographer Paul Kwilecki’s Office
Exhibitions director Courtney Reid-Eaton describes the installation that’s part of an exhibit on view at the Center for Documentary Studies through July 27, 2013—One Place: Paul Kwilecki and Four Decades of Photographs from Decatur County, Georgia. The exhibit features selected photographs from a book of the same name edited by CDS director Tom Rankin and [...]
Celebration of “One Place”: Exhibit Reception, Talk, and Book Signing with Editor Tom Rankin, April 25
Oxford American editor Roger Hodge calls the book “a masterpiece of documentary art.” Renowned photographer Alec Soth says it’s “an American classic.” An event celebrating the publication of One Place: Paul Kwilecki and Four Decades of Photographs from Decatur County, Georgia, will include a talk and signing by Center for Documentary Studies director Tom Rankin, [...]
Performance by Grammy Nominee Tift Merritt at World Voice Day Event, April 16
The Duke Voice Care Center will celebrate World Voice Day 2013 with a special event, cohosted by the Center for Documentary Studies, featuring singer-songwriter Tift Merritt, recipient of Duke Voice Care Center’s Patrick D. Kenan Award for Vocal Health and Wellness. April 16 marks a worldwide annual event devoted to the phenomenon of voice and its importance [...]
New Book and Exhibit: “One Place: Paul Kwilecki and Four Decades of Photographs from Decatur County, Georgia”
“I am frequently asked by people who have not seen my work why I spend my life documenting one simple place like Decatur County, Georgia. People confuse simple with small; they’re not the same thing. There are no simple places or simple lives. . . . . Life [in Decatur County] is like life everywhere, and I [...]
“Good Ol’ Freda”: Duke Grad Ryan White’s Feature Doc to Screen at Full Frame on Friday, April 5
Filmmaker Ryan White is on a roll. The 2004 Duke University graduate’s newest documentary, Good Ol’ Freda, just had its world premiere at SXSW, and will screen at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival on Friday, April 4. The film (tagline: “Behind a Great Band, There Was a Great Woman”) tells the story of Freda Kelly, [...]
Call for Entries: First Annual Will Grossman Memorial Photography Competition
Amateur and professional photographers are invited to submit entries to the First Annual Will Grossman Memorial Photography Competition, established by family and friends of the late Durham, North Carolina, community activist and artist. The competition will be held each year in remembrance of Grossman and to promote photography in North Carolina’s Triangle region. The theme of [...]
Duke Undergrads: Apply Now to the 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival Fellows Program
Duke students have the unique opportunity to join students from across the country in the Fellows Program of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina, from Thursday, April 4, through Sunday, April 7, 2013. Applications are due on Friday, February 22, at 12 noon. The Full Frame Fellows Program is aimed at [...]
CDS Director Tom Rankin and Son Julian on Life and Art in Mississippi
Malcolm White from the Mississippi Arts Hour, a program that airs on the Mississippi Public Broadcasting radio network, recently interviewed Center for Documentary Studies director Tom Rankin and his son Julian, new-media director for the Mississippi Museum of Art. Tom talks about his time in Mississippi, including working at the Mississippi Arts Commission and the Center for the Study [...]
Unique Photo Book: “Choctaw Gardens” by Hilda Stuart
Hilda Stuart, photographer and mother of country music icon Marty Stuart, has been documenting the life around her since she was a sixteen-year-old growing up on a farm in Neshoba County, Mississippi in the 1940s. During the mid-1950s she worked as an assistant at the George Day Photography Studios in Philadelphia, Mississippi; while Stuart embarked on [...]
Introducing . . .
The Center for Documentary Studies has a new be-caped protector, Chatterley, who we named in honor of its creator. Photographer and handmade-camera artist Cedric Chatterley made us an overhead light from an old enlarger, upon which Chatterley, fabricated, perches while watching over those who sit and visit and work on our famous porch. Chatterley, man, tells the origin story: [...]
Closing Reception for “In This Timeless Time,” and Author Presentation, at UNC–Chapel Hill, November 28 & 29
On September 1, 2012, through the fall semester, an exhibit featuring photographs from In This Timeless Time: Living & Dying on Death Row in America, an award-winning book by Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian published by the Center for Documentary Studies and UNC Press, will be on view at UNC–Chapel Hill’s Center for the Study [...]
“Nowhere People” Exhibit Opens with Discussion on the Ethics of Photography for Social Change
Nowhere People, a traveling exhibition by photographer Greg Constantine, will be on view at Duke University’s Kenan Institute for Ethics from November 1 through November 20. In 2005 Constantine moved to Asia to begin work on the project, which documents the struggles of ethnic minority groups who have had their citizenship denied or taken away, leaving millions [...]
Readings by William Chafe from His Newest Book, Reception to Follow at CDS, Saturday, October 13
Esteemed historian William Chafe, longtime Duke faculty member and cofounder of the Center for Documentary Studies, is on a national book tour for his latest work, Bill and Hillary: The Politics of the Personal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly described the book as ”a superior portrait of how the personal dynamic between the [...]
Duke Student and Faculty Work Screening at New York Film Festivals
Work by three students and two instructors in Duke’s MFA in Documentary and Experimental Arts program was selected for the 50th Annual New York Film Festival, and a film by Certificate in Documentary Studies graduate Jean Rheem will be screened at the NYC Independent Film Festival. Films by MFA students Marika Borgeson (Impressions), Erin Espelie (Beyond Expression Bright), and [...]
Flit Lit? “Better Off Without ‘Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession”
Our friends at Southern Spaces—an open-access multimedia journal “about real and imagined spaces and places of the U.S. South and their global connections”—recently asked Center for Documentary Studies director Tom Rankin to take a look at writer Chuck Thompson’s provocative “Northern Manifesto,” in which Thompson sets forth his case for permanent Southern secession. Read Rankin’s [...]
Historian William Chafe on Bill, Hillary, and the Politics of the Personal: An Interview with CDS Director Tom Rankin
A new book by William Chafe, Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History at Duke University and Center for Documentary Studies cofounder, offers a different take on a perennially timely topic: the Clintons. Publisher’s Weekly‘s starred review of Bill and Hillary: The Politics of the Personal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) called the book ”a superior portrait of how the [...]
Book Event for “Good Busy”: Author Discussion with CDS Director Tom Rankin and Writer in Residence Duncan Murrell
“We say we want to better manage our time—but what do we really mean? Do we mean we seek to tame the daily chaos? Are we afraid of how time seems to fly?” Writer Julia Scatliff O’Grady, a former fellow at the Center for Documentary Studies, sought answers to these questions when she set [...]
Listen: New Album, “Camilla,” by Caroline Herring
Singer/songwriter Caroline Herring’s new album, Camilla, captured our attention here. Named Best New Artist at the Austin Music Awards in 2002, the Mississippi native has since gained a devoted following and much critical acclaim. Music journalist Silas House writes, “Herring’s specialty is studying the South and the way race still haunts its people and places but her [...]
National Search Under Way for a New Director at the Center for Documentary Studies
For the last fourteen years director Tom Rankin has been at the helm of the Center for Documentary Studies, founded at Duke in 1989 as the first institution in the country dedicated solely to the legacy and continuing practice of the documentary tradition. On June 30, 2013, he will step down after three five-year terms. “This [...]
George C. Stoney, 1916–2012: CDS Director Tom Rankin Remembers an Iconic Documentarian
In George Stoney’s July 14 obituary, the New York Times described him as “a dean of American documentary film . . . acclaimed in equal measure for his roles as a filmmaker, teacher, and prophet of social change at the barrel of a camera.” Here, Center for Documentary Studies director Tom Rankin shares a few thoughts on [...]
Natasha Trethewey, Former Lehman Brady Joint Chair Professor, Named U.S. Poet Laureate
Natasha Trethewey, former Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke and UNC–Chapel Hill, has been named the nineteenth U.S. Poet Laureate; the announcement was made by Librarian of Congress James Billington. Trethewey is currently a professor of English and creative writing at Emory University in Atlanta. The Center for [...]
“The Loving Story”: Symposium Will Follow Screening of Acclaimed Documentary on Civil Rights Case, March 1–2, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Nancy Buirski, founder of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, made her directorial debut with The Loving Story, which premiered last year at Full Frame and went on to be short-listed this year for an Academy Award for best documentary. A screening on March 1 will be followed by a panel discussion, and on March 2, a symposium, which [...]
