Mission statement: The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University teaches, engages in, and presents documentary work grounded in collaborative partnerships and extended fieldwork that uses photography, film/video, audio, and narrative writing to capture and convey contemporary memory, life, and culture. CDS values documentary work that balances community goals with individual artistic expression. CDS promotes documentary work that cultivates progressive change by amplifying voices, advancing human dignity, engendering respect among individuals, breaking down barriers to understanding, and illuminating social injustices. CDS conducts its work for local, regional, national, and international audiences.

CDS serves as a resource for individuals and groups wishing to learn or develop documentary skills. CDS-sponsored courses taught at Duke University are open to area university students, and a new undergraduate certificate program allows Duke students to further concentrate their academic work in documentary studies. Graduates have an opportunity to take their knowledge abroad through the Lewis Hine Documentary Initiative, which connects young documentarians with the resources and needs of organizations serving children and their communities around the world. For other adult learners, a thriving certificate program in documentary studies is offered to the community in conjunction with Duke Continuing Studies. In addition, a growing number of workshops and institutes provide short-term intensive training and discussion involving documentary tools and topics.

For more than ten years Literacy Through Photography (LTP), a CDS program directed by Wendy Ewald, has worked with teachers and children in the Durham Public Schools in learning the use of cameras and the written word as tools for observation and developing creative powers. LTP also offers workshops to help train teachers and community leaders in other parts of the country in the use of the LTP model. Adapting the LTP approach, Regarding Race uses photography and writing as a catalyst for opening dialogue about race with young people and for developing the capacities of future North Carolina teachers to connect with children of varied backgrounds.

Youth Document Durham is a nationally recognized program engaging young people from diverse local communities in documentary training and projects that examine their viewpoints and amplify their voices. Students in both the after-school and summer programs share the results of their work through publications, exhibitions, Web sites, radio and media projects, public art and community-service projects, and public forums. The Neighborhoods Project works with teachers and students in two Durham elementary schools, using an innovative experiential learning model to engage young students in the communities surrounding their schools and to document individual lives and stories through photographs, narrative writing, and oral history.

CDS offers a number of opportunities for individual documentary project support through its competitive prizes: the biennial CDS / Honickman First Book Prize in Photography, the Dorothea Lange – Paul Taylor Prize for a writer / photographer team in the early stages of a project, the John Hope Franklin Student Documentary Awards for college students, and the CDS Filmmaker Award, selected from films in competition at the annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. CDS also takes the documentary process a step further, encouraging the effective presentation of documentary work through its book publishing program (Lyndhurst Books), an active exhibitions program, the annual Documentary Happening, film and video events, and a growing involvement with documentary radio.

CDS also directs two extensive research projects incorporating in-depth fieldwork: Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South, a major project involving more than 1,200 oral history interviews and thousands of family photographs, and the Jazz Loft Project, devoted to preserving and cataloging audiotapes, researching photographs, and obtaining oral history interviews with all surviving participants from the Manhattan loft of legendary photographer W. Eugene Smith, where major jazz musicians of the day (1957–64), along with countless underground figures, gathered and played their music. Past CDS projects have included Indivisible, a national documentary photography and audio project examining the nature of civic life, community, and grassroots experience in America today.

For information on how to become a Friend of Documentary Studies, click here.

Click on the image below to see the CDS exhibition spaces with The Innocents: Headshots (Juanita Kreps and Lyndhurst Galleries) and A Sense of Place (Porch Gallery) on display:














Gallery Hours:
Monday–Thursday: 9 a.m.–7 p.m.
Friday: 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
Saturday: 11 a.m.–4 p.m.

In observance of the July 4th holiday, CDS will be closed Friday, July 4 through Sunday, July 6.

Beginning June 1, CDS will be closed on Sundays during the summer.







The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
1317 W. Pettigrew Street
Durham, NC 27705

telephone 919-660-3663
fax 919-681-7600
e-mail: docstudies@duke.edu




banner image:

Photograph by Christopher Sims