Undrabörn / Extraordinary Child: Photographs by Mary Ellen Mark

We Cheat Each Other

Documented: Stories from Both Sides of the Border

On View Soon at CDS





Undrabörn / Extraordinary Child
Photographs by Mary Ellen Mark
November 5–January 10, 2010
Kreps and Lyndhurst Galleries

In Undrabörn/Extraordinary Child Mary Ellen Mark portrays in intimate detail the lives of Icelandic children coping with a variety of physical and mental challenges as they go about their daily activities. Moving, poignant, sad and joyous, these photographs take us into a reality that adjoins our own but is seldom seen. The images also powerfully illuminate one of Iceland’s core values, a basic educational policy that calls for schools “without differentiation.” While parents are increasingly enrolling their children in conventional schools, there are those who continue to choose schools that specialize in teaching children with severe learning disabilities, believing that with experienced support and encouragement their children will gain independence and develop abilities that defy expectations.

This exhibit first opened at the National Museum of Iceland as part of its mission to emphasize the diverse facets of Icelandic history and society.

Alexander
A film by Martin Bell
Public screening with Q & A with Martin Bell and Mary Ellen Mark
Wednesday, November 11, 2009, 7 p.m.
Nasher Museum of Art

During the seven weeks that Mary Ellen Mark and her husband, Martin Bell, spent in Iceland from 2005 to 2007, Bell made Alexander, a film that focuses on an extraordinary boy and his family.

We Cheat Each Other
August 24–December 19, 2009
Porch Gallery

Over the last ten years, I have engaged children in Gulele subcity in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in a series of artistic interventions begun when I was awarded a Hart Fellowship from Duke University in 1999. Together, we have used photography, video, audio and text to document their lives and to counteract the stereotypical images — about violence, chaos, and suffering in Africa — that have been made about them. The result has been a series of local and international exhibits of our work together as well as their creation of an organization in Addis Ababa called Sudden Flowers. 

This exhibit at the Center for Documentary Studies centers around one of these children, Salamawit Alemu, with whom I began working at the beginning of this project, when she was eight years old. The pictures and letters stem from our years of working together, during which I have become an unofficial personal historian of her life. On October 22nd, 2009, I will hold a live, transcontinental video feed performance, hosted at the Center for Documentary Studies, in which members of this audience will read letters over the internet to Salamawit that she and I have written to each other over the years as well as letters I have commissioned her loved ones to write.

—Eric Gottesman, August 2009


Related event:
Transcontinental Video Feed Performance
October 22, 7 p.m.




Salam as Meron. Photograph by Eric Gottesman, 2007.








Documented: 
Stories from Both Sides of the Border
By Rebecca Herman
August 24–November 25, 2009
University Gallery

In 2007-08, Duke graduate Rebecca Herman worked as a CDS/Hine Documentary Fellow with the Immigrant and Refugee Initiative (RIRI) at Roca, a youth-focused social justice organization in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Chelsea has the lowest per capita income of any city in Massachusetts, and more than a quarter of its residents under the age of eighteen live below the poverty line. The city is also home to a large and growing immigrant population. Immigration and Customs Enforcement home raids are common in Chelsea and their destructive consequences, both anticipated and actual, are a constant worry.

Given this context, one of the greatest challenges Herman faced as a documentarian involved questions of representation. While some of the participants she worked with had the necessary documents, some did not. Given the ever-present threat of raids and deportation, she was concerned about how best to help young immigrants who were undocumented tell their stories—how to create a documentary about their lack of documents?

Herman collaborated with participants at Roca to produce compelling video and still images. She discovered that the limitations involved in portraying these young immigrants ended in the creation of a powerful document—images and statements that hint at a far larger story than the individual ones portrayed in this exhibition.

See videos from the project, Documented: Stories from Both Sides of the Border

CDS Gallery Hours
Monday–Thursday: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Friday: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Saturday: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sunday: closed

Please note that the Kreps, Lyndhurst, Porch, and University Galleries are typically open during regular CDS business hours. On occasion, the galleries are closed for installation, maintenance, and university scheduling considerations. Visitors might wish to call (919) 660-3663 before they make a special trip to see an exhibition, to ensure that the galleries are open.






Additional support for CDS Exhibitions is provided by the Office of the Provost at Duke University.






banner image:

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


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