Rebecca Herman graduated from Duke in 2005 with a dual major in literature and history, and Spanish. Fluent in Spanish and in Brazilian Portuguese, she has worked on human rights issues for the last three years in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Bolivia. Most recently, she finished a short film called "Yo, Si Puedo," about a literacy campaign in Bolivia. Prior to that, Rebecca worked in Argentina with Memoria Abierta, an oral archive of filmed testimonies given by torture survivors, exiles, militants, and family members. Her role was to help Memoria Abierta develop a large documentary graphic exhibit to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the coup.
"In my work I seek to explore social and political issues through individual testimonies," she says. "The lessons that I have been taught by my colleagues abroad, the experience of living and working in a large variety of cultural contexts, and the Spanish and Portuguese that I have learned in my time there will greatly enrich and expand the ways in which I can contribute to the work of my host organization."
Rebecca will be working in Boston with Roca ("rock" in Spanish), a large, dynamic, twenty-year-old community organization based in Chelsea, just north of Boston. Roca works with young, disenfranchised mostly Latino youth (ages 14–24) in neighborhoods in the northern part of Boston and adjoining communities. Roca serves are gang and street youth, young people leaving foster care, dropouts and disengaged youth, pregnant teens and young parents, court-involved youth, and refugees and recent immigrants.
Margaux Joffe graduated from Duke in 2006 with a major in literature and media studies and a Certificate in Film, Video, & Digital. Like the other two Hine fellows this year, she has been awarded numerous grants and awards for her documentary pursuits. In addition to two documentary videos, she has also completed several fictional videos under the name of her company, Margaux Eve Productions, and has published papers on the hip-hop movement in Cuba. For the past year, she has been working as a teacher in the Dominican Republic, teaching a variety of courses, including social studies and photography.
"I believe that creative mediums such as photography are excellent ways for young people to share their unique views of the world and develop the important skills of self-expression," she says.
Margaux will be working with the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation in Boston. When JPNDC was founded thirty years ago, the Jamaica Plain neighborhood was dismal, with much abandoned housing and few businesses. In the years since, the JPNDC has steadily grown and developed the neighborhood in radical and impressive ways, but the downside is that Jamaica Plain has become a very desirable place to live. As is happening in communities throughout Boston, it is being quickly gentrified, with rents and housing prices increasing to rates that were previously unimaginable for the area. Among other projects, Margaux will be producing a film to champion affordable housing in Jamaica Plain.
Amanda van Scoyoc graduated from University of Pennsylvania in 2005 with a B.A. in psychology and a minor in fine arts. For the last six years, she has worked on a variety of documentary projects, including a series of photographs, interviews, and writing about the impact that adopting nine-year-old Russian twin sisters has had on her family as well as on their own adjustment and development. Over the last year, she has volunteered as a photographer with two nonprofits in Guatemala and Honduras. Most recently, she has been working as an art teacher at a Boy's Club of America, where she has incorporated journaling into her teaching.
"I have always been interested in particular groups of 'at-risk youth' and am very interested in working with kids who are growing up in situations different from their peers, for example, kids who act as a caretaker, older adopted kids, kids growing up with grandparents or in foster care, or kids growing up with a handicap," she says. "I have found that a lot of them feel that the problems they encounter on a daily basis are unique. Documentary work could help them feel more connected to other kids who are growing up in similar situations."
Amanda will be placed with Hine Fellow Rebecca Herman at Roca, which employs almost one hundred full- and part-time employees, runs five large youth programs, and serves almost one thousand youth in the northern Boston region.
Though she was born and raised in Lawrence, Kansas, Libby Conn quickly
fell in love with her adopted home of North Carolina while studying
as an undergraduate at the Center for Documentary Studies. At CDS,
Libby was encouraged to explore her new community by undertaking
various documentary projects. Working over the course of four years
with photography, video, writing, and audio, she collaborated with
many individuals to explore such topics as health care for the disabled
homeless, the death penalty’s impact on family, local reactions
to the invasion of Iraq, young mothers transitioning from welfare
to work, evolving traditions in African American quilting, and voting
practices in rural North Carolina.
In the summer of 2003, with help from the John
Hope Franklin Student Documentary Awards program at CDS, Libby
had the opportunity to live in the Mississippi Delta, where she
worked for a summer youth program as a counselor and oral history
teacher. She and fellow Duke student Laura Tobolowsky worked to
produce The Sunflower County Freedom
Project, a film about the students they met there.
After graduating from Duke University in 2004, Libby worked in Washington,
D.C., as a production coordinator for York Zimmerman Inc, a documentary
film production company dedicated to making films about people and
ideas that change the world. As a Lewis Hine Fellow, Libby is working
with Project Hope in Boston to document the transformation that
young women at risk of homelessness experience when they get involved
with the organization’s programs.
Annie Dlugokecki (Duke ’06) is a still photographer with experience
in both fine art and documentary photography. Her personal connection
with photography, as a means to express ideas and explore personal
events, has made her eager to share this craft with other people.
Annie was a photography instructor at a local elementary school
in conjunction with the Literacy Through
Photography program at the Center for Documentary Studies.
Through her work at CDS, Annie has pursued a variety of photography
projects. In the spring of her junior year she photographed a community
called Southern Village, a planned suburban neighborhood in Chapel
Hill. In her last semester at Duke, Annie completed a collaborative
project with a woman named Regina who had recently been released
from the Raleigh Correctional Center for Women. Annie took photographs
and printed them using the cyanotype process. Regina then responded
to the images by writing on them. Together Annie and Regina edited
this collection of prints.
As a Lewis Hine Fellow, Annie is working with Julie’s Family
Learning Center in Boston. In addition to developing a series of
short documentary videos on Julie’s programs, she is shooting
a series of large-format family portraits of the women the organization
serves. These will be accompanied by interviews she conducts with
the mothers in their homes.
Amara Hark Weber, a 2005 graduate of Bard College in history and
African studies, is passionate about bridging cultural gaps and
misunderstandings, and feels strongly that the best way to mend
cultural rifts is to hear individual stories and voices. While at
Bard, she undertook several study abroad programs, including an
intensive independent study of textiles in Ghana and a human rights
program in Cape Town, South Africa.
Beyond her academic work in history, Amara has a strong background
in bookbinding, surface design, woodworking, and blacksmithing.
She is interested in the ways that the material, social, and historical
worlds intertwine to influence our everyday lives. By working with
artisans and craftspeople around the world, Amara has formed a unique
appreciation of the ways that our material cultures affect us.
In September 2005, Amara moved to Durham, North Carolina, to enroll
in the Certificate in Documentary
Studies program at CDS. Using her newfound knowledge, she spent
the summer of 2006 in Kumasi, Ghana, developing a series of audio
postcards as well as portraits of female traders in the Kejitia
Market.
As a Lewis Hine Fellow, Amara is working with Schedia in Greece
on a variety of audio and photography projects that explore the
lives of recent Muslim immigrant children.
Emma Raynes graduated in 2004 from Bowdoin College, where she majored
in art history and pursued additional interests in photography and
sociology. In 2005 she received her Certificate
in Documentary Studies from CDS, and the following year she
completed a program in General Photographic Studies at the International
Center of Photography in New York City. Emma is a documentary artist
who uses photography, audio, video, book arts, and installation.
She collaborates with the subjects of her documentary work, encouraging
individuals and communities to be participants in the documentary
process. She has worked on projects in Northern Ireland, China,
Nepal, South India, North Carolina, and New York.
During her junior year in college, Emma studied anthropology and
Nepali language in Katmandu, Nepal. In order to expand the scope
of her research and gain a greater understanding of the lived experiences
of Nepali women, she taught local residents how to use cameras to
make images about the things that are most important to them. Back
in the United States she produced three exhibitions of eighteen
collaborative portraits of Nepali women.
After Emma graduated from college, she lived in South India, where
she worked on a project about women’s experiences in the emerging
urban middle class. She organized a photographic exchange between
her students in India and a group of photography students in the
United States.
Emma’s most recent work focused on a shelter for previously
homeless veterans who struggle with mental and physical disabilities.
Concerned about the war in Iraq and the experiences of those who
return from combat situations, she interviewed and photographed
the residents and staff members at the facility. She also led creative
writing and poetry reading sessions for the residents.
As a Lewis Hine Fellow, Emma is working with Centro Popular de Cultura
e Desenvolvimento in Brazil to develop photographs and videos with
impoverished children in rural towns.
Maital Guttman is a documentary filmmaker. As a freshman at Duke
University her interest in documentary work began through the Humanitarian
Challenges at Home and Abroad FOCUS Program. During her senior year
she produced her first full-length documentary titled Mechina:
A Preparation. The film follows six
Israeli teens three months before they become soldiers. Through
the film, Maital hopes to provide a fresh glimpse into the life
of Israeli society and look beyond the images of conflict shown
in the media. As a documentarian she plans to continue telling stories
that are often unheard and unseen by the general public, with the
underlying intent of moving beyond differences and bringing people
together.
A comparative area studies major, Maital is passionate about the
world, its beauty, and its cultures, with primary interest in the
Middle East. She lived in Israel for seven years and is fluent in
Hebrew. She also studied intensive Arabic while living with a traditional
Muslim family in Morocco. She brought many of the lessons she learned
in Morocco and abroad to Duke where she founded the first Arab and
Jewish Students for Dialogue Group. She has traveled and worked
across the globe, in Thailand, New Zealand, Uruguay, Kenya, Australia,
Eastern Europe, and in the United States, in New Orleans.
As a Lewis Hine Fellow, Maital is working with the Ten
Million Memory Project in South Africa to complete a film about
the impact of “Hero Books” on children’s lives.
She receives additional support for her documentary work in South
Africa from the Jessica
Jennifer Cohen Foundation.
Sarah Leeper, a returning Lewis Hine Fellow, graduated from Duke
University in 2003 with a major in developmental psychology and
coursework in education, photography, and medicine. She spent time
with children as a remedial language arts tutor in Durham public
schools, as a Guardian Ad Litem with abused and neglected children
in the North Carolina court system, as a caretaker at summer camps
for children with HIV and other chronic illnesses, and in various
patient care projects at the Duke Medical Center.
After graduation, Sarah worked for a year as a language facilitator
in the Duke Hospital School’s classroom for the hearing impaired,
where she taught deaf children audio-verbal and literacy skills
through photography and personal narratives. She spent a year in
Durban, South Africa, as a Hine Fellow with the Children’s
Rights Centre, working with youth who are HIV-positive and documenting
their experience of living positively. She is especially interested
in empowering children to be active participants in their own health
care and to share their knowledge with others through words and
photographs. Sarah is continuing to work with HIV-positive youth
and the
CRC in South Africa through a ten-month extension of her 2004–2005
Lewis Hine Fellowship. In 2005–2006 Sarah also receives support
from the Jessica Jennifer
Cohen Foundation for her documentary work.
Elena Rue is working to complete the Center
for Documentary Studies (CDS) Certificate program offered in
conjunction with Duke Continuing Studies. During an intensive semester
at CDS in 2001, she completed a number of undergraduate documentary
studies courses and was involved with CDS’s Youth
Document Durham program and Student
Action with Farmworkers, an organization housed at CDS. She
spent that following spring semester in Ghana documenting the unique
sign language of the isolated deaf community of Adamorobe.
Elena is a 2003 graduate of Kenyon College, where she studied anthropology
and photography. While at Kenyon, she combined her interest in photography,
farming, and fieldwork through her involvement with the Rural Life
Center, which promotes local organic food in Knox County, Ohio,
among other activities.
Since graduating Elena has completed internships at the Maine Photographic
Workshops and DoubleTake magazine and has worked with photographers
Wing Young Huie, Constantine Manos, and Lisa Kessler.
Elena’s recent documentary work focuses on adoption and the
changing face of the American family. Included in this body of work
are international, interracial, single, and gay and lesbian adoptive
families in Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio, and
North Carolina.
As a Lewis Hine Fellow, Elena is working work with Hope
for Children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, beginning in January
2006. Hope
for Children supports young children affected by HIV/AIDS by
ensuring they have access to basic services, such as food, shelter,
education, and medical care. Elena receives additional support for
her documentary work in Ethiopia from the Jessica
Jennifer Cohen Foundation. Elena will complete the Certificate
in Documentary Studies program after returning from her Fellowship
next year.
David Blocher graduated from Duke University in 2004. As a student,
his photography focused on American consumerism and Durham's changing
cultural landscape. During this time, he worked with the Scrap Exchange
in Durham teaching the principles of "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle" by facilitating workshops in which children were encouraged to expand
their minds as they transformed industrial scrap into abstract art.
He also taught photography classes and helped direct a summer art
camp at the Art Center in Carrboro.
As a Jessica Jennifer
Cohen/Lewis Hine Fellow, David worked with the non-governmental
organization Persatuan Guru Tadika (PGT) in Taiping, Malaysia. PGT
emphasizes preschool education for the children of Tamil workers
on plantations in Malaysia and is noted for incorporating Tamil
traditions into its educational format. In addition to helping in
the preschool classrooms and teaching weekly photography lessons,
David curated multimedia exhibitions about estate life through photographs
and voice recordings. The exhibitions are intended to spark community
discussions about estate life and give a broader context to the
children's photographic work.
SARAH LEEPER
Sarah Leeper graduated from Duke University in 2003 with a major
in developmental psychology and coursework in education, photography,
and medicine. She spent time with children as a remedial language
arts tutor in Durham public schools, as a Guardian Ad Litem with
abused and neglected children in the North Carolina court system,
as a caretaker at summer camps for children with HIV and other chronic
illnesses, and in various patient care projects at the Duke Medical
Center.
After graduation, Sarah worked for a year as a language facilitator
in the Duke Hospital School's classroom for the hearing impaired,
where she taught deaf children audio-verbal and literacy skills
through photography and personal narratives. She is in Durban, South
Africa, as a Lewis Hine Fellow with the Children's Rights Centre,
working with youth who are HIV-positive and documenting their experience
of living positively. She is especially interested in empowering
children to be active participants in their own health care and
to share their knowledge with others through words and photographs.
Jainey Bavishi, a 2003 Duke graduate in public policy and cultural
anthropology, is a photographer and writer who, as an undergraduate,
documented communities in Havana, Cuba; Kerala, India; and Chapel
Hill, North Carolina. Her work abroad, sponsored by Students of
the World, a student organization at Duke, focused on cultural immersion
and documentation.
Jainey has a long-standing interest in working with youth. She directed
a residential leadership program addressing issues of social justice
and inclusion for high school students with the National Conference
for Community and Justice in Charlotte, North Carolina, during the
summers of 2000 and 2001. In 2002, she facilitated a capacity-building
program for youth with the Quaker Peace Centre in Cape Town, South
Africa. During the summer of 2003, Jainey served as a faculty advisor
for the Global Young Leaders Conference, exploring global affairs
with international high school students in Washington, D.C., and
New York City.
During fall 2003, Jainey continued her studies in documentary work
at the Center for Documentary Studies before leaving for Orissa,
India, for her Lewis Hine Fellowship with the Committee for Legal
Aid to the Poor (CLAP). CLAP provides legal knowledge and services
in local languages to marginalized individuals and families.
BARNABY HALL
Barnaby Hall, a 2003 Duke graduate in history, is a photographer
with an interest in local and indigenous communities. He worked
in Cambodia and Afghanistan while an undergraduate. As an intern
in Cambodia, from February to May 2001, Barnaby documented the efforts
of the Center of Khmer Studies in Siem Reap, a non-governmental
organization dedicated to study, teaching, and research on Khmer
civilization and the cultures on the Mekong. Barnaby photographed
for the UNFPA in Kabul, Afghanistan, during the summer of 2002.
His photographs have been published in the New York Times, Financial
Times, the Evening Standard (London) and the Duke
Magazine.
Barnaby was a Lewis Hine Fellow at the PACOS
Trust (Partners of Community Organizations), a community-based
organization created to develop the overall quality of life of indigenous
communities in Sabah, Malaysia. PACOS is documenting the history of indigenous communities located in
forested land that is being razed for palm oil plantations. Through
this documentation, the organization works for legal recognition
of indigenous people's land rights.
Kate Joyce studied sociology and photojournalism at San Francisco
State University and, during fall 2003, worked on her Certificate
in Documentary Studies through the Center for Documentary Studies. Kate is a photographer interested in the relationship between documentary
processes and art. She spent seven months photographing in Chile,
where she focused on female-headed households. She has also photographed
in Iceland, Guatemala, Spain, and the American West.
In San Francisco, Kate was an intern for Robert Dawson, a photographer
and the founder of the Water in the West Project, and photo historian
Ellen Manchester. Among other projects, she worked on SiteOverTime,
re-photographing locations of images made in the nineteenth century
as a way of looking at cultural and ecological change in the landscape
of the American West.
Kate volunteered with two programs focusing on the collaboration
between schools and museums, encouraging young people to explore
and participate in the visual arts. With Look Again: Photography
in the Classroom, she taught elementary students technical and interpretive
aspects of photography through a range of hands-on outreach activities
that then became part of the educational framework of each classroom.
With SFMOMA Matches she was a mentor for high school students at
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Kate's Lewis Hine Fellowship was with the Diketso Eseng Dipuo Community
Development Trust in Bloemfontien, South Africa. DEDI focuses on
early childhood development; by using participatory models in parental
personal development, the organization benefits children in informal
settlement and rural areas.
Kate Waters, an English major who graduated from Duke in 2000, is
a writer with interests in collaborative work with children and
community development. During her time at Duke she worked with urban
and Mexican immigrant youth on documentary projects through the
Community Stories and Literacy Through
Photography programs at the Center for Documentary Studies.
Kate spent 2000–2001 as a Hart
Fellow in Paraguay, where she developed and coordinated alternative
education projects with young women in rural areas.
From 2001 to 2002 Kate was the documentary coordinator for the Hart
Fellows Program at Duke. In the fall of 2001, she co-taught
with Alex Harris the Duke FOCUS Program seminar Humanitarian Action:
A Documentary Approach. During 2002 Kate was the program coordinator
for the Lewis Hine Documentary Fellows Program and also worked as
a community consultant and assistant teacher on Growing-Up Hyphenated,
a collaborative writing project with second-generation immigrant
youth in Durham, North Carolina.
Kate was a Jessica
Jennifer Cohen Fellow/Lewis Hine Fellow working with Melel
Xojobal in Chiapas, Mexico. Melel targets displaced indigenous
families and children living in the streets of San Cristóbal,
offering support, providing non-formal educational activities, and
enlightening other agencies and organizations about the needs of
these families.
LUCY WILSON
Lucy Wilson graduated from Duke in 2001 with a major in public policy
studies. After graduation, Lucy lived in Ghana, where she worked
for the United States Refugee Resettlement Program - Overseas Processing
Entity (OPE), interviewing refugees throughout West Africa and leading
circuit rides for the OPE field team.
While at Duke, Lucy initiated Teaching Together, Learning Together,
a partnership between Duke professors and Durham public school teachers.
She was also a research assistant with CARE's Office of Public Policy
and Governmental Relations, where she worked on a public advocacy
campaign to increase international family-planning funding. As part
of her coursework at the Center for Documentary Studies, she photographed
a Nigerian family living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
As a Lewis Hine Fellow, Lucy worked with KIWAKKUKI, a local non-governmental organization in northern Tanzania. KIWAKKUKI, an acronym for the Swahili, involves women fighting against AIDS
in Kilimanjaro. This organization is developing programs to create
awareness of orphans and vulnerable children's rights, and creating
counseling services for children and families affected by HIV/AIDS.
Alex Fattal graduated from Duke in 2001 with a major in comparative
area studies. Alex is a photographer who has made images of rural
family life in Russia, Cuba, and most recently, in Colombia on a
Fulbright Fellowship. During his time in Colombia, Alex also collaborated
with local NGOs on programming related to issues of sustainable
development and children's rights. His work in Colombia was also
supported by the AJA
Project.
Prior to these experiences, Alex helped organize a theatre advocacy
group with the Southern Africa Environment Project in Cape Town,
South Africa, and worked as a social services caseworker in New
Mexico resettling refugees. His background in working with children
includes time spent as a teacher and counselor for New York City
adolescents, as a Literacy through Photography curriculum teacher in Durham, North Carolina, and as the founder
and coordinator of a tutoring program for children living at the
Genesis Home in Durham, North Carolina.
Julie Norman graduated from Duke in 2002 with a self-designed major
on media in education and social activism. Julie is a photographer
and videographer with a background in media studies. Julie has coordinated
and produced two collaborative documentary video projects with adolescents.
As an intern with the Global Action Project, she worked with at-risk
youth to produce a video about their daily lives. As a volunteer
for the World Club and Lutheran Family Services of Raleigh, North
Carolina, she worked with immigrant and refugee teenagers on a video
that explored their experiences of resettlement in North Carolina.
During her time at Duke, Julie coordinated Duke's service learning
program, counseled fellow students as a resident advisor, and was
a photography teacher and tutor in Durham public schools. She also
worked as a project assistant for the National School Boards Association's
Education Technology Program.
Mother of seven, Elsie, lifts her three-week-old
son in front of the entrance to her home. Grassland Phase II, Bloemfontein,
South Africa, 2004. Photograph by Kate Joyce.
From the exhibition Grassland
Phase II: Residents and Government Reshaping South Africa’s
Informal Settlements, a selection of
photographs created over the five months Joyce spent with residents
in a government- subsidized settlement named Grassland Phase II, located
on the fringe of an expanding township in Bloemfontein, South Africa.
