Community Portrait Workshops
Sunday,January 14, 2-4:30 p.m.
Tueday,January 30, 6:30-9:00 p.m.
Sunday,February 4 2-4:30 p.m.
A Community Portrait Workshop: Contribute a favorite family photograph and your best family stories to A Community Portrait , a continuous installation organized in conjunction with the Personal Histories exhibition. The workshops will explore themes of identity, memory, and personal history in a format appropriate for both children and adults, and celebrate the diversity of local communities.
For more information, or to schedule a community group's participation in one of the workshops, call CDS at 919-660-3663 or send e-mail to dkdreyer@duke.edu. Participants of all ages are welcome. Admission to the workshops is free, and all family photographs will be returned at the close of the exhibition.
 |
A Community Portrait
A Community Portrait Gallery
Presented in the context of the artists' creations, the photographs viewed in Personal Histories take on multiple layers of meaning, even as their original purpose as family artifacts deepens. You are invited to examine and celebrate your own family images and personal histories by participating in A Community Portrait, an exhibition for exploring self and family, image and artifact, community and culture.
A Community Portrait provides an environment for individuals and school and community groups to engage in the ideas and concepts raised by Personal Histories. Through a series of public workshops (dates listed above), participants will learn and apply techniques for exploring old family photographs through the addition and layering of writing, collaging, and mark making. In addition, you may contribute a family photograph and help create the Portrait Wall, a visual demonstration of the diversity and richness of the Triangle community.
A Community Portrait may be viewed in two exhibition spaces: the Lounge Gallery at CDS and online, where those who cannot visit the Center for Documentary Studies also may include their family portraits and related text. The growing collection will exist as evidence of the families and individuals who participated in the project and serve as a document of the local community.
Other components of A Community Portrait help us see the impact of photographs on our private and public worlds:
- The family photographs of Louis Davis Stone show how important these images are in the telling of a family history as well as how images often become the starting point for family shrines and the preservation and honoring of our ancestors.
- For his twenty-sixth birthday, Dwayne Dixon's mother, Wendy, made him a quilt designed around their shared history. Using old fabric scraps she inherited and portions of cloth cut from pajamas Dwayne's grandmother had made for him as a boy, Wendy collaged the quilt into twenty-five distinct panels. She included drawings and old family photographs (through the use of phototransfers) into some of the panels. The quilt is a powerful representation of family and the connection between mother and son as it draws on traditional patterns and the personal vision and craft skills of its maker.
- Outside the frames and albums where we keep our family photos, we collect and preserve memories in all sorts of places: letters, postcards, journals, and grocery lists, some discarded without thought, others preserved carefully or by chance. We have created a correspondence desk where you can explore and savor some of these artifacts.
- Over a two-year period (1998-1999), Sarah Brayman worked as a volunteer through the Center for Documentary Studies with the seniors at the Little River Senior Center in north Durham County. As a culmination of this collaboration, they created a "memory table" about the seniors¹ lives and their community. The table is an example of collaborative visual memory, both in the process used to create it and in the final product.
|
Be a Part of a Virtual Community Portrait
To contribute a family photograph via the internet, please email the image as an attachment (either .gif or .jpg) to dkdreyer@duke.edu Please include any information about the photograph you would like (your name, names of individuals in photograph, dates, relationship). If you would like to share a story about the the photograph, or its particular importance to you, we welcome that information as well.
By emailing your photograph to the above address, you are granting the Center for Documentary Studies permission to post the image on the Personal Histories/Community Portrait website, and to include a copy of the image in the Lounge Gallery at CDS. It will not be used for any other purpose without your permission.
We will try to post your image within a week of receiving it! Check back often to see what (and who's) been added!
|
|
|
