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Hugh Mangum Exhibit at Durham History Hub

Portrait photos by Hugh Mangum. From the Hugh Mangum Photographs, #N258.
Portrait photos by Hugh Mangum. From the Hugh Mangum Photographs, #N258.

The portraits of Durham photographer Hugh Mangum are the subject of a new exhibit, opening July 22nd at the Museum of Durham History’s History Hub. “Hugh Mangum on Main Street: Portraits from the Early 20th Century” shows Mangum’s largely unknown portraits of Southern society after Reconstruction.

Mangum was born in Durham in 1877 and began establishing studios and working as an itinerant photographer in the early 1890s. During his career, Mangum attracted and cultivated a clientele that drew heavily from both black and white communities, a rarity for his time. Mangum’s photographs are now part of the Rubenstein Library’s Archive of Documentary Arts.

“Although the late-19th-century American South in which he worked was marked by disenfranchisement, segregation and inequality — between black and white, men and women, rich and poor — Mangum portrayed all of his sitters with candor, humor, and spirit. Each client appears as valuable as the next, no story less significant,” said curator Sarah Stacke. “His portraits reveal personalities as immediate as if the photos were taken yesterday.”

Stacke, a photographer and a 2014-2015 Lewis Hine Fellow at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, and Margaret Sartor, who teaches at CDS, are working together on a book about Mangum’s life and work. This new exhibit expands on “Keep All You Wish,” an exhibit of Mangum’s work that Stacke curated for CDS in 2012.

“Hugh Mangum on Main Street: Portraits from the Early 20th Century” opens at the History Hub, 500 W. Main St., on Tuesday, July 22 and runs through August. The exhibition will be in the Our Bull City area.

The public is invited to a launch party for the exhibition on Wednesday, July 23, from 5:30pm to 7pm, and a program on Mangum and his work at 3pm on Sunday, August 10.There is no charge for the exhibit, program, or party. The Hub is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10am to 5pm.

Ben Lowy on The Daily Show

News flash! Photographer Ben Lowy was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night talking about his new book Iraq|Perspectives, published by the Center for Documentary Studies and Duke University Press. You can watch the full episode on The Daily Show‘s website. Our friends over at Duke University Press, who attended the taping with Lowy, blogged about their exciting visit, too.

Catch Ben Lowy’s exhibit, “Iraq|Perspectives: Photographs by Benjamin Lowy,” in the Rubenstein Library Gallery through December 11.

Can’t make it to the Rubenstein Library?  There is an online exhibit as well, where you can view Lowy’s award-winning photographs and  listen to a recording of his talk about his work, given here at the Rubenstein Library this past November.

Ben Lowy is the fifth award winner of the CDS/Honickman Foundation First Book Prize in Photography. The exhibit photographs will be available for viewing in the reading room of the Rubenstein Library after the show ends.

Post contributed by Karen Glynn, Photography Archivist.

Opening Reception for “Iraq | Perspectives”

Date: Thursday, November 10, 2011
Time: 5:30 PM
Location: Biddle Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Karen Glynn, 919-660-5968 or karen.glynn(at)duke.edu

Join the staff of the Archive of Documentary Arts and the Center for Documentary Studies for an opening reception for our new exhibit, “Iraq | Perspectives: Photographs by Benjamin Lowy.”

Lowy is the winner of the fifth Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography. During tomorrow night’s reception, he will speak about his work and sign copies of his book, Iraq | Perspectives, published by Duke University Press and the Center for Documentary Studies

Lowy’s powerful and arresting color photographs taken through Humvee windows and military-issue night vision goggles capture the desolation of a war-ravaged Iraq as well as the tension and anxiety of both U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

Lowy received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2002 and began his career in 2003 when he joined Corbis and embedded with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to cover the Iraq War. In 2005 Photo District News chose Lowy’s Iraq images as some of the most iconic of the start of the 21st century. Lowy’s photographs appear regularly in national and international such publications as the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Fortune, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Stern, and Rolling Stone. His work has been exhibited at San Francisco MOMA, Tate Modern, Open Society Institute’s Moving Walls, Noorderlicht Photofestival, Battlespace, and the Houston Center for Photography, among others.

For more details about the exhibit, on display through December 11th in the Rubenstein Library Gallery, visit this blog post or view the online exhibit.