Local Color

March 27–May 21
Porch Gallery


RECEPTION
Saturday, April 22, 2–4 p.m.

As part of the new academic focus on digital arts at Duke, in the fall semester of 2005 Alex Harris taught a seminar on color photography as a documentary tool. The class met each week in the state-of-the-art digital classroom at the new Arts, Culture, and Technology Studios at the Smith Warehouse. Each week the seminar viewed and discussed the work of different contemporary color photographers, but the focus of the class was on work by the students.

Students had one semester to start and complete a documentary project and to produce an edited and sequenced series of twenty color prints. To accomplish this, each student was also required to learn sophisticated techniques in scanning, Photoshop, and inkjet printing. By necessity, the projects were mostly set in the Triangle area. "As I got to know the extraordinary range of people and places students photographed, I began to think a better name for this class would have been 'local color.' Though only a few photographs by each student are exhibited, I believe there is clear evidence of the potential of new technology to encourage creativity, to point photographers and other documentary artists in directions we are only beginning to discover," Harris said.

The students and their projects are:

Adam Attarian / Downtown and Underground: A Look Inside AAA Check Cashing and Bail Bonding

Tim Stallman / Pine Knolls

Elizabeth Teel / Welcome Home

Karen Meyerhoff / A Positive Perspective on Humanity's Relationship with Nature

Rachel Browne / Lost Time and Found Moments

Zoe Hiserman / Documenting Durham

Sunghyun (Christy) Choi / The Way You Look at Things

Michelle Lotker / Human Impact on the Environment: The FACE Project in Duke Forest

Katherine Kime / Unintended Relationship

Kirsten Bostrom / Duke and the Chapel

banner image:

Partial view of the Lyndhurst Gallery, one of four exhibition spaces at CDS. Photograph by Christoper Sims.


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