Beyond Beauty: Conversations at the Nasher

The Nasher Museum at Duke University is hosting a half-day conference on the role of photography in modern society, scrutinizing traditional ideas that photography can function as an agent of social change, a record of historical events, or a source of aesthetic pleasure.

The conference, to consist of a series of conversations among professionals in the field, will run from 1-6 pm on Friday, October 2nd, 2009, in the Nasher Museum.

Participating in the conversations will be photographers Dawoud Bey, Bill Burke, Eric Gottesman, Laurel Nakadate, Susan Meiselas, Tom Rankin, and Deborah Willis. They will be joined by Philip Brookman of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Alison Nordström of the George Eastman House.

Paul Hendrickson, Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will conclude the conference with a talk about the archive's role in preserving and providing access to a society's photographic heritage.

This event is co-sponsored by the Archive of Documentary Arts at the Special Collections Library, the Center for Documentary Studies, and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. It is free and open to the public.