Introspection: Stories From the Center

A young soldier with copper-penny hair and a stunned look on his face rests against a tree with his gun. Across the room, a tiny, charred picture frame represents a woman's pain at losing everything in a fire. Turn a corner, and you'll hear audio of a woman talking about the teen pregnancy that made her consider suicide.

These are a few of the pieces in "Stories from the Center," a multimedia exhibition on view at the Center for Documentary Studies through Jan. 6. The exhibit is special because it showcases the work of the center's faculty members and staff, rather than of students or visiting artists. It's a chance for those outside the center who might be interested in taking courses to see the work and interests of their potential teachers. And it's a rare chance for center staff to see what their colleagues have created.

"We don't have that many opportunities to see each other's work," says Courtney Reid-Eaton, the center's exhibitions director. "We can't always go to shows when people have them, and sometimes they're in places that we can't get to. So it's also sort of a selfish thing for us to have a chance to see what we are all doing."

The work is often startlingly personal: In the photographs and mementos, Ava Johnson documents the impact of a fire that killed her dog and destroyed the only photograph she had of her grandmother.

Reid-Eaton, who also has a mixed-media piece in the show, sees introspection as a natural, though perhaps unexpected, use of the documentary form.

"A lot of what people are used to imagining when they hear ‘documentary' is poor, downtrodden people," she says. "At the beginning of the practice, that's certainly what it was for, to shake people into action over particular social issues. But I think it's a much broader and deeper form now."

Many of the pieces bring the viewer into a world they haven't experienced before, such as Christopher Sims' photograph of the soldier during a training exercise in Louisiana, or Liz Lindsey's recording of the woman remembering the confusion and trauma of her teen pregnancy.

"It's just a different way of connecting with people and fostering empathy," says Reid-Eaton. "Once we can empathize with another human being, then we want them to be happy and free, just as we want ourselves to be happy and free."