Category Archives: Archive of Documentary Arts

Archive of Documentary Arts, New at the Rubenstein Library, Rare Books

New Acquisitions Week, Day Four: The British, in India and Cast Away

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We’re celebrating the beginning of a new fiscal year with a week’s worth of new acquisitions from the first half of 2012.  Two newly acquired selections will be featured in a post every day this week.  All of these amazing resources are available for today’s scholars, and for future generations of researchers in the Rubenstein Library!

  • Samuel Bourne Photographs: Samuel Bourne is the best-known photographer of India under British rule, capturing landscapes, architectural studies, and genre scenes from 1863 to 1870.  He co-founded the studio Bourne and Shepherd, still active today in Kolkata as the world’s oldest operating photographic studio.  The Library has acquired over 300 of Bourne’s photographs, prized for their technical quality, their documentation of Indian sights, and the insight they can provide into British views of Indian life.  The Bourne photographs are a valuable addition to a growing body of photographs of India in the Archive of Documentary Arts.
Samuel Bourne, “The Taj, from the Garden, Agra,” 1860s.
  • Daniel Defoe, The Life and Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; Serious Reflections Upon the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: One of the most groundbreaking and influential narratives in literary history, Defoe’s tale of a castaway on an uncharted island  has been endlessly reprinted, adapted, updated, copied, and critiqued since its first appearance in 1719.  Thanks to a generous donation by Alfred and Elizabeth Brand, the Library now holds the second edition of The Life and Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, printed days after the first edition in 1719, as well as first editions of the two continuations of the story, including the famous map of Crusoe’s “Island of Despair.”  This invaluable set will be a jewel in the Library’s large collection of works by Defoe, and is also a key complement to the Negley Collection of Utopian Literature.

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Archive of Documentary Arts, Digital Collections

A Fond Farewell in Photography

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Karen Glynn, long-time Photography Archivist in the Archive for Documentary Arts, retires today to move to South Africa. In her honor, we present some images of travel and farewell from our digitized collections. Happy trails, Karen! We’ll miss you!

Sidney Gamble, Men in boxcar ("Travelling Fourth Class"), China, 1917-1919. From the Sidney D. Gamble Photographs.
William Gedney, South Dakota, 1966-1967. From the William Gedney Photographs and Writings.
ca. 1980s, from the Outdoor Advertising Association of America Archives.
Gary Monroe, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 1994. From the Gary Monroe Photographs.
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.