Going Behind the Lens
Events celebrate photography
Monday, September 28, 2009
DURHAM, N.C. -- A series of events hosted by Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) showcases photography this month.
On Thursday, Oct. 1, award-winning author and New York University professor Deborah Willis will discuss and sign copies of her book, Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present. A photographic history of black beauty, Willis’ book features more than 200 photographs celebrating ordinary people, as well as famous African-Americans including Muhammad Ali, Rosa Parks and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs.
The following day, photographers, dealers, curators and scholars will engage in conversations about photography tied to the exhibit “Beyond Beauty: Photographs from the Duke University Special Collections Library” at Duke’s Nasher Museum of Art. The keynote address at the half-day conference will be presented by Paul Hendrickson, the Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Then on Thursday, Oct. 8, writer/photographer Steve Featherstone and writer Paul Maliszewski will discuss the exhibition, “The Collector: Joseph Mitchell’s Quotidian Quest,” on display in CDS’ Kreps Gallery through Oct. 24. The event also kicks off the first day of CDS’ Doc U Arts Institute “Words and Images,” Oct. 8 through 11.
A staff writer for The New Yorker for almost 60 years, Mitchell amassed a collection of artifacts such as doorknobs, nails and other seemingly mundane objects gleaned from old buildings, flea markets and vacant lots in New York and New Jersey. He also often returned to the tobacco fields of his North Carolina home, where he found old farm implements, Native American arrowheads and pottery shards. The exhibition features photographs and text written by Featherstone, and Maliszewski invites viewers into the world that Mitchell witnessed, saved and left behind.
“[The collection] has this relationship to preservation,” says Courtney Reid-Eaton, exhibitions director at CDS. “[Mitchell] saw this collecting as a way of saving a view of New York that doesn’t exist anymore.”
All events are free and open to the public.
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Posing Beauty: Book Signing with Deborah Willis
7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 1
Center for Documentary Studies, 1317 W. Pettigrew St.
Beyond Beauty: Conversations about Photography
1 - 6 p.m., Friday, Oct. 2
Nasher Museum of Art
The Collector: Joseph Mitchell's Quotidian Quest
6 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 8
Center for Documentary Studies, 1317 W. Pettigrew St.
For more information: cds.aas.duke.edu.
