Now On View at CDS

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Olive Branch: Twenty-five Years in the Life of Mark Fisher and Cedric Chatterley

Reciprocity: Cedric Chatterley's Handmade Cameras

Walls That Speak

Olive Branch:
Twenty-five Years in the Life of Mark Fisher and Cedric Chatterley
Photographs by Cedric Chatterley

and

Reciprocity:
Cedric Chatterley's Handmade Cameras

January 28–May 21, 2010
Kreps and Lyndhurst Galleries

Reception and artist's talk: January 28, 2010, 6-9 p.m.; talk at 7 p.m.

Olive Branch
Cedric Chatterley was a graduate student in photography, hanging out with his camera in Cairo, Illinois, when he was approached by a young man who invited him to photograph “everything in my house that's broken.” Mark Fisher believed in the power of the photographic document to facilitate change, and thus began Chatterley and Fisher’s twenty-five year (so far) collaborative project Olive Branch, named for Mark's Illinois hometown. The exhibition, which includes photographs, journals, ephemera, and handmade cameras, documents nearly three decades of Mark Fisher’s life and reveals the evolution of this remarkable relationship at the foundation of Chatterley's most important work.

Cedric Chatterley, Mark digging for ginseng roots in the hills behind Olive Branch, Illinois, spring 1986

Reciprocity
Cedric Chatterley makes photographs using film and he still prints in the darkroom. A few years ago, he started making cameras. The first cameras Chatterley built were made for him alone, an exercise in the imaginative and practical use of found objects and cast-off materials. He then became inspired to collaborate with friends and fellow artists—not only in creating images but also in constructing the instruments used to make them.

Photographing in the Key of C from Center for Documentary Studies on Vimeo.

View installation photographs of Reciprocity: Cedric Chatterley's Handmade Cameras

Walls That Speak
By Pac McLaurin
December 11, 2009–February 27, 2010
University Gallery

Several years ago while working with a church-sponsored youth camp in western North Carolina, I visited one of the service sites where the kids were volunteering. The walls of the house were decorated with drawings and cutouts from magazines and catalogs. I had the good fortune to meet the two brothers, both in their sixties, who lived there and who created these artworks. After this chance meeting, I continued to think I really should go photograph those walls and preserve some of those images.

So I did. I photographed all of the rooms and details of the wall art, which are quite beautiful and lyrical. Both of the brothers are developmentally disabled and during their childhood on the family farm, their mother set them to drawing and cutting out images. The walls of the house are completely covered with drawings and collages, with most of the rooms finished by the brothers’ early adulthood.

On these walls it is possible to trace the history of the men—as boys growing up, the changing times, and the influence both their mother and their niece had on their selection of images. In looking at these rooms, and seeing how the brothers’ art developed over time, many layers of meaning are revealed, and it is clear that the result of their mother’s effort to create a safe place for them, their own place, lasted for most of their lives. The brothers continued to live at home until recently. In 2008, they moved into an adult-care home, because their aging sister could no longer manage their care.

—Pac McLaurin

Pac McLaurin is a self-described self-taught photographer who has attended many workshops and enjoyed mentorships with various photographers including Steve Anchell, Al Weber, and Sam Abell. He teaches courses in photography at Appalachian State University, including documentary photography, and has conducted multiple overseas student workshops.

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

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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