Two pictures, taken 30 years apart.
1946: Five crisply dressed women, one in a pinafore, another in a suit. They walk in step in front of a West Campus arch, hair bobbed, bright smiles. They are summer school students, candidates for Gargoyle Beauty Queen.
1976: Same arch, different women. They wear high-waisted pants, dark aviator shades, an Afro. Their loose and freewheeling pose suggests a different era. Four are students; one is an employee.
Three decades later: Organizers of a photography contest aim to update these images of women at Duke with a new picture. Open to Duke students, staff and faculty, the contest will culminate in two winners and an exhibition March 21 of all qualifying entries. The submission deadline is Feb. 26.
"I think it's important to document the history of women at Duke as it happens," says Claire Robbins of the Women's Center, which is co-sponsoring the contest with the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture. "Let's celebrate, visually, the diverse experiences of women at Duke."
The two existing photos illustrate changes that already have taken place among Duke's women.
Mary Ann Groome was Mary Ann Duncan when the 1946 photo was taken; she was in summer school, and women -- "co-eds" -- were allowed to live on West Campus. She was 20.
"It was a wonderful time, and a happy one, too. The war was coming to an end, and the boys were coming back to campus. And I married one, two years later, after graduation," she said.
Groome -- she's the one in the middle, in the pinafore -- was crowned Gargoyle Beauty Queen at a semi-formal dance later that summer.
"They were great days at Duke," Groome said. "Everything was formal, very nice."
Ann Meacham (second from the left, wearing the suit) also married a serviceman who returned to Duke that year. She met him that summer, when he was waiting tables on West Campus. Like Groome, she remembers that summer with fondness (even though she was retaking the English class she had failed.)
"It was a lot of fun. We played bridge on the grounds and we studied and we swam. We had a good time," she said.
Goldie Evans remembers 1976 as a fun time on campus as well -- but with a rock-and-roll edge.
Evans (second from the right in the 1976 photo, sporting an afro) was the Union bookkeeper. Evans, who now works at North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Co. in Durham, was 24 at the time. She was a graduate of North Carolina Central University and barely older than the students in the photograph, who were all part of Union committees.
"I was part of the team," she said. "I worked with the Union committees, I handled their books, collected the money at performances."
It was a loose time, she said -- every day was dress-down day, there was beer in the Union, and she got to meet performers such as Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie and Chaka Khan.
Now she laughs and shakes her head thinking about that crazy time.
"It happens for a season and a reason and you move on to other things," she said.
Jamaica Woodyard-Gilmer, program assistant at the Mary Lou Williams Center, says she is interested in seeing what the current season brings for women at Duke. A photographer herself, Woodyard-Gilmer says the contest was intended for photographers at all levels.
"I'm just excited about the opportunity for people to make it personal," she said. "It could be something that doesn't reflect every single woman at Duke."
The idea for the contest began to form when Robbins found the 1976 photo on her desk when she started work at the Women's Center. When she located the older photo as well, Women's Center director Donna Lisker got the idea of doing another 30-year update. (They're fudging the date a bit, but it's still the '06/'07 school year.)
The idea was driven in part by the representations of Duke women in a Rolling Stone magazine article last year, and the discussions of the ideal of "effortless perfection" that came out of the Women's Initiative, Robbins says. Many women at Duke said they didn't see themselves in those portrayals, Robbins says.
"Let's somehow honor the fact that there's no one way to describe women at Duke," she said.
The contest rules are designed for maximum flexibility. Organizers decided to choose winners in two categories: One with the arch, and the other without. The photos still must have five women, or persons identifying as women. Contest details can be found here.
Woodyard-Gilmer said they're curious to see what comes in.
"We've heard exciting rumors of folks taking pictures all over campus," she said. "We're excited."