July Issue 1999
Three New Exhibitions at the Center for Documentary Studies
Three exhibits opened on June 18 at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Durham, NC, that explore shared spaces. Showcasing the work of many different artists, the exhibits investigate environments, landscapes, and neighborhoods from the streets of Durham all the way to the Great Plains of the American Midwest.
Each exhibit compliments the others by focusing on a particular space, and by teaching viewers about this space. It's fascinating how each exhibit tells an entirely different story, but how all three are rooted in the idea of exploring your surroundings. Each exhibit encourages a diligence in viewers to pay more attention to our lives, from the tiniest details on the steet where we live to the larger issues that concern us as a society." says Chris Sims, program coordinator for exhibitions at the Center.
A community forum about race relations and environmental issues, "S.E.E.D.S." is being presented at the Center's Porch Gallery. Photographer and Center volunteer Carson Boone collaborated on a documentary enterprise with the organization S.E.E.D.S. (South Eastern Efforts Developing Urban Spaces), photographing the group's efforts to bring African Americans and Latinos in Durham together through joint gardening projects. The exhibit will run at CDS through July 31.
Concentrating on a more isolated and expansive area, photographer Peter Brown s On the Plains offers a look at a very different environment. For most Americans, the western Plains are an unknown region, one passed through on the way to somewhere else. Brown's large, vibrant color photographs of this remarkable landscape depict a journey that has taken him over a dozen years and many thousands of miles to complete. His photographs of the open spaces at America's heart reveal a complex landscape both beautiful and powerful, mediative and dynamic, vast yet intimate. This exhibition will be on display in the Juanita Kreps Gallery through August 14, and is drawn from the book On the Plains, published by the Center for Documentary Studies.
Depicting with lively insight ye another environment, the E. K Powe Elementary School Neighborhoods Project is the culmination of an eight-week Center for Documentary Studies Connect program that uses documentary techniques to help children explore their environments and the ways in which they live. One hundred first- and second-graders from Durham's E. K. Powe Elementary School made field trips to each of the four neighborhoods surrounding the school. Working in teams, they gathered information about where people work and where they live, the streets and signs in the vicinity, and the vegetation and landscape around them. The resulting exhibition of small artifacts, photographs, drawings, and writings will be on display in the Juanita Kreps Gallery through Sept. 11.
These exhibitions are made possible by support from the Lyndhurst Foundation. The Porch Gallery is also sponsored by the Independent Weekly.
For further information check our NC Insitutional Gallery listings
or call 919/660-3663 or visit the Center's website at http://cds.aas.duke.edu
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