Outdoor projection at Look3. Photographer unknown.
A self-described “celebration of photography, created by photographers, for those who share a passion for the still image,” the annual LOOK3 Charlottesville Festival of the Photograph takes over downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, for “three days of peace, love, and photography.” This year’s event (Thursday, June 13–Saturday, June 15) includes artist conversations, exhibits, outdoor projections, book signings, parties, and workshops. Visiting artists include world-renowned photographers such as Richard Misrach, Carrie Mae Weems, and Josef Koudelka, to name just a few.
Special professional and creative learning and networking opportunities include Education Week, portfolio reviews, and Adobe Lightroom courses. Center for Documentary Studies publishing and awards director Alexa Dilworth is one of this year’s portfolio reviewers. For more information, click here.
Passes and tickets go quickly, and register now to ensure your spot in a workshop, class, or portfolio review: look3.org.
Still from “Granny’s Got Game”
First-time filmmaker Angela Alford has been garnering lots of praise (ESPN.com and Huffington Post, among many other admirers) for the documentary that she started as her final project in our Certificate in Documentary Arts program. Granny’s Got Game follows a senior women’s basketball team in North Carolina—seven fiercely competitive women in their seventies who battle physical limitations and skepticism to keep doing what they love (for two decades and counting) as they compete for another National Senior Games championship. Watch the trailer in this Huffington Post story.
Granny’s Got Game
One-night only screening
Monday, May 20, 7 p.m.
Colony Theater, 5438 Six Forks Rd
Raleigh, North Carolina
Tickets available here
Angela Alford is a former software engineer and “will forever be a basketball player” (Vanderbilt University and USA Basketball).
Video still featuring Daijon McCathern. iMovie made by Daijon McCathern, Javae Pollard, Takayla Harris, Tristan Lopez, and William Jackson.
A new exhibit on the Duke University campus showcases work made by fifth-grade students in Lisa Lord’s classroom at Club Boulevard Humanities Magnet School in Durham, North Carolina, based on their yearlong study of Historic Stagville, which contains the remnants of one of the South’s largest pre-Civil War plantations. The fifth graders worked with Duke undergraduates from Literacy Through Photography, a class at the Center for Documentary Studies taught by Katie Hyde. Through iMovie stills and quotations, original writing, and archival materials, Stories from Stagville features the final product of this collaboration; the students’ powerful expressions and poignant writings illustrate their complex questions and discoveries.
Stories from Stagville
May 10–July 7, 2013
Lilly Library, Duke University East Campus
1348 Campus Dr., Durham, North Carolina
Map and directions
The Club Boulevard students made multiple visits to the historic plantation site in Durham and also studied primary historical documents including the personal letters of the Stagville plantation owners; photographs; and interviews with surviving ex-slaves collected in the 1930’s by the Federal Writers’ Project of the WPA. Each fifth-grader then wrote about the life of one enslaved person through multiple perspectives—that of the enslaved person, that of a friend, and that of a slave owner. The Duke undergraduates helped the students video-record their performances as they spoke their historical fiction. Teams of students then edited and sequenced their material to create iMovies.
A “round-robin” demonstrator asks to buy a ticket to the Carolina Theatre and gets a refusal at the box office. Once turned away, protestors went to the end of the line and waited their turns to try again. Photograph by Jim Sparks, courtesy of the Durham Herald-Sun.
The Durham Civil Rights Heritage Project will be on view through June 27 in the newly renovated Power Plant building on the historic American Tobacco Campus in downtown Durham, North Carolina. The eleven banners that make up the exhibit tell the story of some of Durham’s most significant civil rights activities using photographs, texts, and quotes from oral histories. The traveling show has been to local schools, libraries, businesses, churches and synagogues, organizational offices, and other venues. The banners–meticulously researched and beautifully rendered–consist of 3-foot x 6-foot fabric panels in custom-designed rustic iron frames. Directions.
Eleven continuing education students in the Certificate in Documentary Arts program at the Center for Documentary Studies will present their final projects to the public and receive their certificates. A reception will follow at the Center for Documentary Studies. The students and their projects are described below.
Certificate in Documentary Arts Project Presentations
Friday, May 17, 6:30 p.m.
Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
2001 Campus Drive, Durham, North Carolina
Directions
Reception to follow
Center for Documentary Studies
1317 W. Pettigrew St., Durham, North Carolina
Directions
The CDS Continuing Education program offers courses in the documentary arts to people of all ages and backgrounds. Some choose to enroll in the certificate program, culminating in the Final Seminar in Documentary Studies, where students finish and present a substantial documentary work—photography, film and video, audio, multimedia, and writing projects that often move out into the world in the form of exhibits, installations, screenings, websites, and more. This spring’s final seminar was taught by folklorist, filmmaker, and longtime CDS instructor Nancy Kalow.
JT Blatty
Fish Town (audio and photography)
In the remaining fishing communities of Louisiana, marshlands once mirrored a landscape rich with oak and cypress, divided by a winding road running parallel to a bayou: On one side, fishermen docked their boats, and on the other side made homes with their families. Over the years the countryside has transformed along with the industry: Skeleton trees and empty lots sit between fenced-off industrial plants, and the bayous have become ship graveyards. “You shoulda seen it,” Blatty’s interviewees told her. “This was God’s country.”
Terry Grunwald
Wait! Breathe! Sing! (video)
This profile of Katherine Kaufman Posner offers a glimpse into the power and beauty of opera, an art form currently struggling to find an audience among younger generations. Posner was the youngest-ever winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1964, at the age of twenty. She is now a sought-after voice teacher.
Christine Harrigan
Chuck (video)
Chuck Negron was one of the lead singers of the popular 1970′s rock group Three Dog Night. A lifestyle of wealth, excess, and “success” led to heroin addiction and eventual homelessness. Hitting rock bottom, sick and nearly dead, Chuck Negron found the strength to become clean and sober, happier today at age seventy than he was when he was was young, rich, and famous.
Jenny Morgan
Pray, Baby, Pray: A Palestine Mix Tape (audio)
Drawing on the writings and life stories of two Palestinian woman writers in their twenties—Tala Abu Rahmeh and Linah Alsaafin, both living in Ramallah, the West Bank—Pray, Baby, Pray explores identity, family, and life and death under occupation for an emerging generation of Palestinian women.
Nick Pironio
Urban Chickens (photography)
Whatever their reasons—eggs, fertilizer source, learning tool for children—owners of “city chickens” believe that “his or her chickens are treated better than those raised in corporate farms,” says Pironio. This exploration of the urban chicken-raising subculture offers insights into the culture of “local” as a counterpoint to the global economy.
Donna Kay Smith
I Think About That Sometimes (video)
Our ideas about people with mental illnesses come from the media and from professionals, seldom from the people themselves. I Think About That Sometimes lets one woman share her story about living with mental illness, for ultimately the ability to tell one’s own story shapes what others understand, revealing one’s truths and dispelling myths. “And only when we are able to hear the stories of others like us do we know that we are not alone—that we are, after all, normal,” says Smith.
Maggie Smith
Benevolence Farm Documentary Project (audio and photography)
This series of multimedia portraits is conducted in collaboration with Benevolence Farm, a transitional living program on a working farm for women leaving prison in North Carolina. Women are the fastest-growing prison population in the U.S. Their experiences demonstrate the need for a multifaceted approach to prison reform and post-incarceration support: an overwhelming majority are survivors of sexual abuse, suffer from substance abuse, and are unmarried mothers of minor children.
Lynda-Marie Taurasi
In Union Strong Success Is Sure (audio and photography)
From 1989 to 2003, a civil war in Liberia left a quarter million dead and a devastated economy. In 2005, democratic elections were held; the new administration of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf pledged to rebuild Liberian schools and improve child literacy. Taurasi’s multimedia project documents a teacher-training program at two primary schools in rural Liberia.
Julie Thomson
In Search of the Marble Donut (audio)
This project “documents my search for a marble donut like that one I had as a child at the now-closed Anastasia’s Donuts in Okemos, Michigan,” Thomson says. Her quest takes her to donut shops in Michigan, North Carolina, and San Francisco, accompanied by her parents, her partner Spott, and friends. To hear the full version of this documentary, or to learn about Thomson’s other donut projects, visit www.donutgrrl.wordpress.com.
Nora E. Weatherby
Over the Dancing Flames (audio)
The stories in this audio essay include written prose exploring Weatherby’s evolving perspective of home, family, and loss, and oral history interviews compiled from a series of recordings detailing the experiences of her mother and her mother’s two older sisters. “This piece is a conversation between generations, touching on memory and myth within family stories and how they interact with the sense of place,” Weatherby says.
Robert Marshall Wells
The Art of Persuasion (video)
This documentary explores Pi Kappa Delta, the national speech and debate society now celebrating a century of helping educate students, broaden minds, and transform lives. Former Texas governor Ann Richards, broadcasting pioneer Edward R. Murrow, and actor Spencer Tracy are just a few of the prominent Americans who participated as members of the society during their college careers.
The Center for Documentary Studies. Photograph by Joel Mora.
The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University is accepting applications for three nine-month internship positions that will begin in September 2013 and end in May 2014. The interns will gain broad experience in the documentary field, with particular focus on exhibiting, digital arts and publishing, web design, and producing a range of materials related to the documentary arts. The interns will be based at CDS in Durham, North Carolina, for the 2013–14 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.
For more information, including detailed descriptions of the positions and application instructions, click here.
The application deadline is Monday, June 4, 2013.
“1110 Main St.: McPherson Hospital.” Photograph by Jack Anderson
Photographer MJ Sharp, a Center for Documentary Studies instructor, did an independent study with undergraduate student Jack Anderson that culminated in his exhibition of nighttime black-and-white photographs, Hidden in Plain Sight: Architectural Reminders of Durham’s Vital Past. Sharp explores the world at night in her work, as does Anderson. “We talk like two old crusty sailors about shooting at night,” says Sharp,” and I’ve been out on the sea just a little bit longer.”
Hidden in Plain Sight: Architectural Reminders of Durham’s Vital Past
Monday, May 6: Exhibit opens
Tuesday, May 14, 6 p.m.: Opening reception
Through August 31, 2013 | Porch Gallery
Center for Documentary Studies
1317 W. Pettigrew St., Durham, North Carolina
Directions
Anderson says that he “began this project with the goal of documenting the process of gentrification in the city, but it has a evolved into a more targeted examination of particularly significant historical sites in Durham that have declined through neglect or abandonment. These places deserve more respect than they have been given; this exhibition attempts to help us remember them. The homes, workplaces, schools, and hospitals that we have forgotten are highlighted here in order to recall both the beauty they once had and the function they once served.”
From “Winged Invasion: The Blackbirds of Scotland Neck” by Lisa Sorg
Anytown, USA is a class at the Center for Documentary Studies offered annually through our Continuing Education program, in which students produce and edit videos related to a small town in North Carolina. This year’s class, taught by filmmaker Randolph Benson, focused on the town of Scotland Neck, and each of the eleven students created a short film on a topic of their choice.
Students will screen their films at the newly renovated Power Plant building on the historic American Tobacco Campus in downtown Durham; on May 10, an outdoor screening was held in Scotland Neck—beautiful weather, well attended.
Friday, May 24, 7 p.m.
Full Frame Theater, Power Plant building
American Tobacco Campus, 318 Blackwell St.
Durham, North Carolina
The 2013 Anytown, USA videos will be posted for viewing at a later date; to watch the 2012 videos, click here. For more information, email cdscourses@duke.edu.
Moray, 1975. Toned gelatin silver print by Edward Ranney.
Internationally renowned photographer Edward Ranney will be on the Duke campus to give a presentation on his forty-plus-years work documenting natural and man-altered landscapes; the talk is free and open to the public. His work of the 1970s in the southern Andes of Peru resulted in the book Monuments of the Incas (1982), which was reprinted in an expanded edition in 2010. Since 1985, Ranney has dedicated himself to a comprehensive photographic survey of pre-Columbian sites along the Andean Desert Coast. His recent work with Lucy R. Lippard in the Galisteo Basin, near Sante Fe, New Mexico, was published in Down Country in 2010.
Tuesday, May 7, 1 p.m.
Perkins Library, Room 217
411 Chapel Dr., Duke University West Campus
Durham, North Carolina
Map
Edward Ranney has received numerous awards, including two Fulbright fellowships for his work in Peru, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Photography Fellowship. His work has been presented in individual exhibitions at the Princeton University Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of New Mexico Art Museum, and the Centro Cultural of Miraflores in Lima, Peru. His other books include Stonework of the Maya, Prairie Passage, and Pablo Neruda’s Heights of Macchu Picchu.
This event is cosponsored by Duke Libraries and the Center for Documentary Studies.
Check out these three great offerings from our Continuing Education program—one- and two-day workshops and an online class:
Copyright Issues for Documentarians
Saturday, May 11, 10 a.m.–12 p.m.
Copyright is an increasingly important—and sometimes treacherous—subject for documentarians, who are both owners and users of copyrighted works. Learn about issues of copyright, fair use, and how the law affects documentary artists in this workshop led by lawyer Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, where she heads its Arts Project, which analyzes the effects of intellectual property on cultural production. More information and register here.
Animation in Documentary: A Hands-On Introduction
Saturday and Sunday, May 18–19, 1–5 p.m.
This two-day workshop will provide a hands-on introduction to two animation techniques: 2D, using Adobe Photoshop and After Effects; and stop-motion, using a variety of cameras. Led by filmmaker and animator Francesca Talenti, students will practice making simple animations with both techniques, and will come away with a good sense of what it takes to make a complete animated scene. More information and register here.
It Starts with the Story: Creative Nonfiction for Documentarians
Mondays, May 20 to July 8, 6–8 p.m.
ONLINE
This online class led by writer Deavours Hall will address documentary writing as a genre, and how to shape and edit the stories you feel passionate about telling. The focus will be on written texts, but the class will also consider the interplay of words and images by looking at illustrated texts and sensory images. Students will have weekly readings and short assignments, with the goal of a completed work by the end of the course. More information and register here.
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