Archive of Documentary Arts

The Archive of Documentary Arts in Duke’s Special Collections Library collects, preserves, and makes accessible photography and moving image materials related to human rights, social change, occupational culture, migration, race and ethnicity, gender, the American South, and African-American history and culture. It works closely with Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies and the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

News & Events

August 2009:  Publication of Beyond Beauty: the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University. 

July 2 – October 18, 2009:  Beyond Beauty: Photographs from the Duke University Special Collections Library, an exhibit at the Nasher Museum of Art.  

October 2, 2009: Beyond Beauty: Conversation about Photography, a one day photography symposium in conjunction with Beyond Beauty, the book and the exhibition. For more information click here.  To receive a copy of Beyond Beauty and support the Archive click here.

Current holdings span the history of photography from the earliest nineteenth-century cased photographs—daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, to salt prints, albumen prints, gelatin silver prints and the latest digital technology prints.  Representative collections include:

• Western expeditionary photographers: Timothy O’Sullivan, William Bell, John K. Hillers, and William Henry Jackson.
• Mariette Pathy Allen
• Max Belcher Photography Collection
• Mathew Brady
• Griff Davis
• James Karales Photographs
• Paul Kwilecki Photographs and Papers
• Mel Rosenthal Photographs and Papers
• H. Lee Waters Papers
• Full Frame Archive
  

• Michael Francis Blake
• Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Video Archive
• Sidney D. Gamble
• William Gedney
• Hugh Mangum
• Deena Stryker
• "The Urban Landscape" Digital Image Access Project

On-line Exhibits

• Rob Amberg
• Danny Wilcox Frazier
• Carl Mydans
• William Gedney & Paul Kwilecki
• William Gedney & Lynn Saville
• Alex Harris
• James Karales
• R.C. Maxwell Company photographs of Atlantic City
• Olive Pierce
• Tom Rankin
• Mel Rosenthal
• Margaret Sartor
• Larry Schwarm
• Steven Smith
• Then & Now: 8 South African Photographers

Most of the archival collections in this area have searchable encoded finding aids or can be searched in the Duke Library online catalog.

The focus of the library’s collecting is on photographs, films, and other visual materials as documentary sources, with a particular emphais on social change, occupational culture, race and ethnicity, gender, the American South, and African-American history and culture. The Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library works closely with the Center for Documentary Studies in coordinating the development of its collections.

For more information about the Archive of Documentary Arts’ photographic collections contact Karen Glynn. For additional information about the moving image collections, contact Kirston Johnson.

Karen.Glynn@duke.edu, 919-660-5968

Kirston.Johnson@duke.edu, 919.681.7963

For general information about finding materials in the library's collections and how you can use them, requesting permission to reproduce, or other information as well as reference questions about the holdings in this area:

E-mail:	special-collections@duke.edu
Phone:	(919) 660-5822
FAX:	(919) 660-5934

If you are getting in touch via e-mail, please be sure to include your return e-mail address in the body of the message, since it sometimes gets stripped from the header in transit. Also, if you expect a response, make sure to include a phone or fax number or postal address where we can reach you, since sometimes it is difficult or impossible to respond via e-mail. Thank you!