Opening Reception "L.A./Cuba: 2 Artist/2 Classrooms" Thursday, August 10, 5:30-7 p.m. This exhibition feaures photographs by students from Hillandale Elementary School and Githens Middle School in Durham, from projects with photographers Lauren Greenfield and Ernesto Bazan. Greenfield and Bazan worlked with the Durham students as part of Gallery in the Classroom, a Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) project designed to make documentary photography relevant beyond the defined space of the gallery. The photographers, who had exhibitions on display at CDS, worked in the classroom with the students and their teachers to create a link between the formal exhibit, the learning environment, and the students' lives as they exist largely unseen apart from school. Lauren Greenfield in her exhibit "Fast Forward" featured youth subculture in her native Los Angeles as a reflection on current social questions and her own adolescence in the city. With Melanie Middleton's fourth-graders at Hillandale Elementary School, Greenfield discussed her own work with teenagers and how she incorporated both photographs and oral histories into her exhibit. Throughout the week, the students shot four rolls of color film, looking at their work with Greenfield as they learned about editing and visual narratives. At the conclusion of the week, the students constructed books about their communities using the best of the week's work. "El Periodo Especial" has been the subject of Ernesto Bazan's ongoing visual record of Cuba's last era under Castro. Bazan and the eighth-grade students from Vanessa Calhoun and Jill Stohl's classes, including Latino students from the ESL class, at Githens Middle School visited the Juanita Kreps Gallery together to view Bazan's photographs. This was part of their week-long photographic examination of community. Through exchanges between Bazan and the students, the centrality of home and family emerged as a specific symbol of community. The students photographed throughout the week, sharing their work with each other and elaborating on their final edits with narrative writing. Gallery in the Classroom is supported by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, bringing the CDS project Literacy Through Photography into collaboration with the Juanita Kreps Gallery at CDS. Events at the Center for Documentary Studies are free and open to the public. The Center is located at 1317 West Pettigrew Street, off Swift Avenue between Duke's East and West campuses. For more information please call 660.3663.