Search

The North Carolina Self-Portrait Photography Collection includes copy negatives, contact sheets, prints, information sheets, agreements, and voice recordings created as part of the North Carolina Self-Portrait Project, undertaken to build an archive of images and other materials documenting the experiences of African American families in the South. The photographs were assembled by requesting copy photographs from African American families primarily in North Carolina, but a few locations in Mississippi were also included. Acquired as part of the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University.

The Center for Documentary Studies opened in January 1990 and is an outgrowth of and replacement for the Center for Documentary Photography (1980-1990). The Center combines traditions of documentary photography and film, writing, oral history, and scholarly analysis in seeking to capture life experiences. The 25 Under 25 project showcases twenty-five of America's most promising photographers, all twenty-five years old or younger. This collection contains 21 prints from an exhibit celebrating the project's initial publication, 25 Under 25: Up-And-Coming American Photographers, a Lyndhurst Book published by powerHouse and the Center for Documentary Studies in 2003.

Digital videos, photographs, and transcripts documenting critical oral history conferences in 2016 and 2018, with Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee veterans, hosted by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. The 2016 Critical Oral Histories Conference focused on "The Emergence of Black Power, 1964-1967," while the 2018 Critical Oral Histories Conference focused on the efforts directly leading to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Youth Noise Network (YNN) is a youth radio project based at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. YNN brings together a diverse group of Durham teenagers to produce a weekly radio show that addresses current issues of particular concern to teens. YNN participants learn various aspects of the documentary arts and produce their own audio documentaries. Collection includes some printed materials about youth radio as well as audiovisual materials that are closed to use until preservation copies can be made. Acquired as part of the Archive of Documentary Arts.

Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies awarded a CDS Documentary Essay Prize annually between 2013-2020. This collection contains the 5 photography prints from Nastassia Kantorowicz Torres' project "Point d'eau," which won the prize in 2018.

The Center for Documentary Studies opened in January 1990 and is an outgrowth of and replacement for the Center for Documentary Photography (1980-1990). The Center combines traditions of documentary photography and film, writing, oral history, and scholarly analysis in seeking to capture life experiences. Collection contains publications, calendars, announcement, brochures, newspaper and magazine clippings, a videocassette, and other materials such as administrative files and electronic files. The materials date from 1990 and the collection is ongoing.

Youth Document Durham and Durham Works were programs sponsored by Duke University and the Center for Documentary Studies that brought together young people ages 12–16 from diverse Durham communities to document their lives, local history, and contemporary social issues through photography, oral history, and narrative writing. The Youth Document Durham and Durham Works project records span the years 1995-2008 and document the process of training young people in Durham, North Carolina schools to use photography and other arts, oral histories, and writing to record the history and members of their communities and the local issues affecting the students' lives. Many of the students are African American or Hispanic and their topics often highlight social conditions and race relations in African American and Hispanic communities in Durham neighborhoods and in a few other locations, including South Carolina. Topics explored by participants, both interviewers and interviewees, include crime, food cultures, jobs and education, music, racism, technology, teen violence, work cultures, and tobacco cultivation and its social context. The bulk of the collection is made up of hundreds of oral interviews conducted by junior high and high school students with community members, documented through audiocassette recordings, photographs, writings, and some transcripts, but there are also many program publications, project curricula, and administrative records for the program from its beginnings through 2008. There is also a database created by Center for Documentary Studies staff that records the complete information for each interview, including descriptive notes on certain interviews. This data also contains restricted information. For access to this database, please consult with a reference archivist. Acquired as part of the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University.

John Moses, a professor of pediatrics at Duke University, spent eleven years documenting teenage parents in North Carolina counties, including Durham and Orange. Jocelyn Lee is a professor at the Maine College of Art and worked for six years in parts of Texas, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and Nova Scotia, living and working with young mothers. Collection of 24 gelatin silver prints from an exhibit, The Youngest Parents: Teenage Pregnancy as it Shapes Lives, displayed at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies in 1998.

Collection consists of computer files comprising oral histories conducted by students with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual, or Queer (LGBTQ) Duke alumni. The oral histories document the inviduduals' experiences as members of the LGBTQ community before, during, and after their time at Duke. The alumni attended Duke between the mid-1970s and 2000s and describe experiences at and around Duke and Durham, North Carolina from a variety of perspectives and time periods. The oral histories were collected as part of the Spring 2015 class LGBTQ History and Activism: Duke, Durham, and Beyond. Computer files include audio files (WAV and MP3), field notes and tape logs (DOC and DOCX), and the occasional supporting document file.

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. The collection includes work created by students enrolled in documentary studies courses at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), sponsored by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke. Acquired as part of the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University.