Category Archives: Archive of Documentary Arts

Archive of Documentary Arts, Digital Collections, Exhibits

Keep All You Wish: The Photographs of Hugh Mangum

The Archive of Documentary Arts monthly blog post highlights work in our holdings that has been digitized. This month, we remember the work of photographer Hugh Mangum (1877-1922), currently on exhibit at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke.  Graduate student Sarah Stacke curated the exhibit Keep All You Wish: The Photographs of Hugh Mangum as her final project for the Graduate in Liberal Studies degree, Spring 2012. The exhibit can be viewed at the Lyndhurst Gallery at the Center for Documentary Studies until October 20, 2012. Keep All You Wish will be viewable online through the Library’s exhibit site shortly.

Hugh Mangum primarily photographed in small towns between Durham, North Carolina, and southern Virginia.  The collection is comprised of unidentified glass plate negatives.  The images in this blog are jpegs of photographer Bill Bamberger’s inkjet prints created for the exhibit from the Library’s scans of the glass plate negatives.

Post contributed by Karen Glynn, Photography Archivist, Archive of Documentary Arts.

Archive of Documentary Arts, Events, Films, New at the Rubenstein Library

New Day Films Events at Full Frame to Celebrate Rubenstein Library Acquisition

The founders of New Day Films. Back row: Amalie R. Rothschild, Julia Reichert, Jim Klein. Front: Liane Brandon
The founders of New Day Films. Back row: Amalie R. Rothschild, Julia Reichert, Jim Klein. Front: Liane Brandon

The Rubenstein Library is pleased to announce the recent acquisition of the New Day Films Collection. The collection includes the founding films and organizational records of New Day founders Liane Brandon, Jim Klein, Julia Reichert, and Amalie R. Rothschild. Documenting a pioneering film distribution company and collective, the first to distribute feminist films in the early 1970s, the New Day Films Collection is an important record of both New Day’s formation and the Feminist Movement.  New Day Films is a thriving organization, celebrating 40 years in 2012 as a participatory democratic filmmakers’ cooperative with 120 members and 250 titles. The Rubenstein is committed to preserving the New Day Films Collection for future generations to make this record of the evolution of progressive independent American filmmaking available for teaching and research.

In celebration of New Day coming to Duke, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival will screen New Day’s founding films—Anything You Want to Be (Brandon), Betty Tells Her Story (Brandon), Growing Up Female (Klein, Reichert), and It Happens to Us (Rothschild)—on Friday, April 13, 2012 at 4:50pm.   There will be a panel conversation with all four founding members about New Day’s exceptional history on Saturday, April 14, 2012 at 9:30AM.

Film still from Growing Up Female, Jim Klein and Julia Reichert

For more information on the New Day Films Collection at the Rubenstein, see: http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/documentaryarts/events/

For more information on the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, including a complete schedule and ticket information, see:  http://www.fullframefest.org/

For more information on New Day Films, see:  http://www.newday.com/

 

Archive of Documentary Arts, Digital Collections, Exhibits, From Our Collections

Frank Espada’s Puerto Rican Diaspora

This month the Archive of Documentary Arts highlights the work of Frank Espada. The images were selected from Nation on the Move – the Puerto Rican Diaspora: Photographs by Frank Espada, 1963-1990, an exhibit currently on view in the Rubenstein Library. The exhibit presents images from Espada’s photographic survey of the Puerto Rican diaspora, with a focus on rural migration in Hawaii and Pennsylvania, and urban migration in New York City and Hartford, Connecticut.

The Rubenstein Library’s Archive of Documentary Arts acquired the Frank Espada Photographs and Papers Collection in 2011. Collection materials include exhibit prints, work prints, contact sheets, negatives, oral history interviews, transcripts, and papers.

 

Washington, D.C., 1973
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, 1984
Pentecostal preacher, East New York, Brooklyn, NY, 1964
The cook's boy, mushroom farm, Kennett Square, PA, 1981
Archive of Documentary Arts, Bingham Center, Events, Films

Rights! Camera! Action!: 12th & Delaware

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Twelfth and Delaware posterDate: Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: The FHI Garage, Smith Warehouse Bay 4, 114 S. Buchanan St. (map)
Contact information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu

Co-Director Heidi Ewing and Carey Pope (Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina) will lead a discussion following the film.

12th and Delaware takes its name from an intersection in Fort Pierce, Florida, where an abortion clinic named A Woman’s World sits across the street from the pro-life Pregnancy Care Center. Pregnant teenagers and women often mistake the pro-life center for the abortion clinic, and are patiently and persuasively counseled by its staff, often with deceptive tactics, to keep their pregnancies. Meanwhile, the medical staff of the clinic try to counsel patients to make their own choices and to perform their work as pro-life protesters walk the sidewalk in front of the clinic day and night. Turning a non-judgmental lens on both camps, filmmakers Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing use the extraordinary access they gained to practitioners, protestors, and patients to show us a conflict with seemingly no possible resolution.

The screening will be followed by a discussion panel. Heidi Ewing has been making critically acclaimed documentary films and television programs with co-director and -producer Rachel Grady for over ten years. Their film Jesus Camp, a candid look at Pentecostal children in America, was nominated for a 2007 Academy Award for best documentary feature. Two years earlier, The Boys of Baraka, about a group of “at-risk” pre-teens from Baltimore who attend an experimental boarding school in Kenya, was nominated for an Emmy. 12th and Delaware premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and, among other honors, won the Kathleen Bryan Edwards Award for Human Rights at the 2010 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

Carey Pope is the Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina. She has worked in the fields of reproductive and sexual health education, research and advocacy for more than eight years in Houston, Washington, DC, and North Carolina. She holds a master’s degree in public policy and women’s studies from The George Washington University and a B.A. in English and women’s studies from North Carolina State University.

About Rights! Camera! Action!: Featuring award-winning documentaries about human rights themes from Durham’s annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the series explores issues ranging from the immigration and refugee rights to the justice system and the environment. All films featured in the series are archived at the Duke Library and are part of a rich and expanding collection of human rights materials. Co-sponsors include The Human Rights Archive, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Archive of Documentary Arts, the Franklin Humanities Institute and the Program in Arts of the Moving Image (AMI).  Special co-sponsor for this screening: Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture.

 

Archive of Documentary Arts, Digital Collections, From Our Collections

Lynn Saville’s Night Views

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This month the Archive of Documentary Arts highlights the work of nocturnal photographer Lynn Saville. The images were selected from Night Vision: Photographs of William Gedney and Lynn Saville, exhibited in the Rubenstein Library in 2005.   The Lynn Saville Photograph collection contains over two hundred black and white and color prints, the majority photographed at night.

Smith and Ninth Street, Brooklyn, 2002

 

Lynn Saville photograph, Palais Royale, Paris, 1999
Palais Royale, Paris, 1999
Lynn Saville photograph of graffiti in Brooklyn
Dancer on Front Street, Brooklyn, 1997
Lynn Saville photograph of Brooklyn Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge Fog, 1999
Archive of Documentary Arts, Events, From Our Collections, Readings and Talks

Gary Monroe: Photographs, 1976-2012

Date: Monday, February 20, 2012
Time: 6:00-7:30 PM
Location: Biddle Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Karen Glynn, 919-660-5968 or karen.glynn@duke.edu

Gary Monroe will present a retrospective of his work and talk about his life as a photographer at this upcoming event on the Duke University campus.  Among the generation of young men and women influenced by Cartier-Bresson and Garry Winogrand, Monroe’s work includes long-term, continuous documentation of people and places as well as “decisive moment” images captured on the fly.

Protesters with large sign, Les Gonaïves, Haiti, 1986
Protesters with large sign, Les Gonaïves, Haiti, 1986

Monroe describes the body of his photographic work on his website as, “Film-based black-and-white documentary photographs of images from South Beach, Miami, New York City, and from around the world—Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, Spain, England, India, Poland, Egypt, Israel, and the Caribbean, as well as photographs of Disney World tourists, Holy Ghost revival participants, roller derby contenders, sex offenders, mentally ill individuals, blind people, and corporate-driven architecture.”

Cairo, Egypt, 2010
Cairo, Egypt, 2010

Duke University’s Rubenstein Library Archive of Documentary Arts holds a selection of Monroe’s early Haiti photographs dating from 1980–1998; to view the selection, click here.

Gary Monroe is a professor of art at the Southeast Center for Photographic Studies in Daytona Beach, Florida. For more information on Gary Monroe’s work, visit his websites:
www.garymonroe.net
www.floridafolkart.net

Archive of Documentary Arts, Events, Films, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, Human Rights Archive

Rights! Camera! Action!: Wetback

Date: Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: The Garage, Smith Warehouse Bay 4, 114 S. Buchanan St. (map)
Contact information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu

Join Rights! Camera! Action! and our special co-sponsor Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) for a screening of Arturo Perez Torres’ “Wetback: The Undocumented Documentary,” winner of the 2005 Full Frame Spectrum Award. This screening is part of a year-long celebration of Student Action with Farmworkers’ 20th Anniversary.

Wetback follows undocumented migrant workers from their home in Nicaragua across Central America and Mexico to the U.S.-Mexican border, meeting many other migrants along the way. They encounter gangs, vigilantes, corrupt law enforcement, physical danger, and safe havens in their attempt to be among the 10% of migrants who actually make it all the way into North America. The migrants, those who aid them, and those who turn them back all give their own perspectives on how this vast, illegal system trafficking in cheap labor and dreams actually functions, and what its terrible costs and perils are.

Immediately following the screening join us for a panel discussion including North Carolina Rep. Paul Luebke (D), 2011 SAF Fellow Nandini Kumar, and SAF Advocacy and Organizing Director, Nadeen Bir.

The film is 92 minutes, in Spanish and English with English subtitles. This event is free and open to the public, with free drinks and popcorn and free parking.

Cosponsored by Student Action with Farmworkers.

About Rights! Camera! Action!:  Featuring award-winning documentaries about human rights themes from Durham’s annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the series explores issues ranging from the immigration and refugee rights to the justice system and the environment. All films featured in the series are archived at the Duke Library and are part of a rich and expanding collection of human rights materials. Co-sponsors include Duke Library’s Human Rights Archive, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Archive of Documentary Arts, the Franklin Humanities Institute and the Program in Arts of the Moving Image (AMI).

Archive of Documentary Arts, Digital Collections, Manuscripts, New at the Rubenstein Library, New Finding Aids, Technical Stuff

Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel

A monthly series highlighting the Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Collection Project and the woman behind the documents.

Diamonstein-Spielvogel

Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel is an advocate for art in fashion, design and architecture and a leading voice on some of the defining urban issues of our time, including preservation of the historic built environment of the United States. The impact of her work is all around us.  Have you been inside re-adapted buildings?  Diamonstein-Spielvogel was one of the pioneers of adaptive reuse of buildings throughout the country.  Have you seen “Historic neighborhood” medallions on street signs in numerous major cities?  She pushed for those (and still does).  As we start the New Year, we are excited to announce the Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Collection, a new addition to the Rubenstein’s Archive for Documentary Arts.

Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel helps to commemorate the inventor of Scrabble with an historic street sign.

Diamonstein-Spielvogel’s interest in the relationship among the arts, public policy, community and politics has charted the course of her career, fostered her involvement in national and local institutions and organizations, and earned her many awards and honors. As the first Director of Cultural Affairs for New York City, she brought the first public art to Bryant Park in 1987 and the first public performance by the Metropolitan Opera to Central Park. Diamonstein-Spielvogel was appointed by President Reagan to the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and by President Clinton to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, where she was elected its first woman vice chair in 2002. In 2010, Barack Obama appointed her as a commissioner of the American Battle Monuments Commission. She has written 20 books and dozens of magazine and newspaper articles and has served as interviewer/producer of nine television series for the Arts and Entertainment Network plus several programs for other national networks, many of which Duke has made available in the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Video Archive.

Diamonstein-Spielvogel’s latest book, Landmarks of New York: An Illustrated Record of the City’s Historic Buildings

As part of the two-year Diamonstein-Spielvogel Collection Project, we will be processing the 200-plus boxes of manuscripts pertaining to her life and career.  The project will culminate in an exciting exhibit in 2013. In our next post, look for information on Diamonstein-Spielvogel’s work with famous designers and artists including Calvin Klein, Adolfo, Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Nevelson, Jeanne-Claude and Christo, Roy Lichtenstein, and Sam Maloof.

Post contributed by Ruth Cody and Caroline Muglia, Graduate Interns for the Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Collection Project.

Archive of Documentary Arts, Digital Collections

Portraits from Charleston

The Archive of Documentary Arts continues its monthly series highlighting work in our holdings that has been digitized. This month we are spotlighting the Michael Francis Blake Photographs, 1912-1934. The collection includes 117 photographs of men, women, and children taken between 1912-1934 by Michael Francis Blake. Blake opened one of the first African-American photography studios in Charleston, S.C. and the photographs represent his work from the 1910s to his death in 1934.  The images come from a photographic album entitled “Portraits of Members,” which might have been used by clients in the studio to select the backdrop and props they wanted in their photographs. To see more of Michael Francis Blake’s photographs, visit the library’s digital collection.

Post contributed by Kirston Johnson, Moving Image Archivist, and Karen Glynn, Photography Archivist, Archive of Documentary Arts.

Archive of Documentary Arts, Bingham Center, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, Hartman Center, History of Medicine, New at the Rubenstein Library

New Year, New Acquisitions

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What better way to ring in the new year (okay, we’re a couple of weeks late) than with a roundup of exciting new acquisitions from the second half of 2011?   All of these amazing resources will be available for researchers in the Rubenstein Library in 2012 and for years to come!

  • Stereograph of John Wesley Powell with a Native American. From the Powell Expedition Photograph Album.

    Powell Expedition Photograph Album: A remarkable album of 539 photographs taken during John Wesley Powell’s Second Expedition along the Colorado River in 1871-75 by John K. Hillers, E. O. Beaman, and James Fennemore.  The photographs include landscapes of the Western states and documentary photographs of Native Americans, especially the Paiute tribe.  Part of the Archive of Documentary Arts.  Look for more information on this album in the Biblio-file column in the January-February 2012 Duke Magazine.

  • Case book of Dr. Philip Turner. From the Philip Turner Papers.

    Philip Turner Papers: Documents from the life and career of Dr. Philip Turner (1740-1815), Surgeon General for the Eastern Department of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.  The manuscript collection contains correspondence, medical returns, printed materials, records from northeastern field and city hospitals, and ledgers documenting Turner’s career as a surgeon in private practice, in the Continental Army, and in the United States Army. Part of the History of Medicine Collections.  More information about this important collection of early American medical history is coming soon!

  • The Door in the Wall, And Other Stories, by H. G. Wells: This 1911 limited edition of Wells’s science fiction and fantasy stories features stunning photogravure illustrations by the vorticist photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn.