Joel Wanek found a new way to connect to Durham this semester. From September through November, Wanek spent four days a week at the Durham bus station but never boarded a single bus.
A first-year student in Duke's new Masters of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts program, Wanek based his 13-minute documentary video "Heart of Durham" on the Durham bus station and the people who frequent it. The film offers a glimpse of bus passengers as they take their morning and afternoon commutes.
"There's a certain amount of social energy there that I haven't seen anywhere else in Durham," said Wanek who accrued dozens of hours of footage.
Wanek and the other 14 students in the program revealed their works-in-progress before more than 30 people in a public showing last Tuesday at the Carpentry Shop at Smith Warehouse. The short video documentaries, photo gallery presentations and other media covered subjects including the Occupy movement and the students' own families. Alex Harris, professor of the practice of public policy and documentary studies, taught the class.
Introducing their works, students shared stories about working with sometimes difficult subjects. Wanek said he appreciated the opportunity to create documentary art and praised the guidance Harris provided.
"Duke has been almost overwhelming in the opportunities it provides us," Wanek said. "Most teachers are interested in what we want, but Alex is invested in what we want and what we want to do."
Wanek first met Harris when he took a Duke class taught by Harris 13 years ago in which Wanek created a photo essay about Durham's East Main Street. In returning to the city, Wanek was moved by the different atmosphere in Downtown Durham. His documentary revolves around the "heart" of Durham -- the city center's bus stop where every 30 minutes, each bus in Durham comes to pick up passengers.
"I definitely become a familiar face. Once that happens, so much is possible," he said. "I like to look at things a while. I like to linger on them."
Wanek is hoping to screen his documentary at the bus station, possibly on an exterior surface.
"I think there's power in projecting people very large," he said.
Harris teaches his students not to be obvious with the point they're trying to make in their art.
"One of the themes we discussed is [how to portray art] obliquely," he said. "If you want to say something you don't necessarily come out and say it. We want to have work evolve from what you experience to what you document."
Student Lisa McCarty began taking the photos six years ago while on a road trip. Today, she has 174 rolls of film, totaling more than 2,000 images. She was unsure what to do with the photos, before her MFA peers suggested she use them in class.
For the project, McCarty created a gallery-style presentation of about 20 of her photos, some of which were taken at the Victorian home of Henry Fox Talbot, one of the earliest experimental photographers, in England.
One of her techniques is to blend two photos into one new image.
"I used to try to roll the film wrong to try to see what weird thing would happen with the print," McCarty laughed.
This experimental attitude is something many of the students share. First-year student Natalie Minik found the subject of her documentary "Truly" close to home. The film is based on her mother's struggle with her dream of becoming a professional singer.
Minik captured images of her mother in old home movies, which repeat alongside images of the first moon landing in 1969. Minik said she didn't originally plan on creating a documentary about her family, but found the subject matter too intriguing to ignore.
"I lived in Atlanta with my family, and I remember specifically pulling out of the driveway, following my brother in a U-Haul [when moving to Durham]," Minik said. "I thought, there's absolutely no way I'd do a documentary about these people. Obviously that didn't pan out."
To learn more about Duke's MFA program, visit the program's website.