Welcome Back to CDS
We're happy to have our spaces filled with students again!
Captured during the first week of undergraduate classes, this image shows a camera obscura exercise in Susie Post-Rust’s course, immersing students in the basics of photography through the study of light, lenses, and image-making.
Fall Continuing Education courses are also starting at CDS, bringing even more students into our in-person and virtual learning spaces to develop documentary skills across media.
Photo: Susie-Post Rust
Continuing Education Spotlight
One of our upcoming fall courses:
Explore risograph printing and publication-making in this hands-on course led by Mort O’Sullivan. Working from your own photographs, you’ll learn 3- and 4-color separation, ink layering, registration, and press techniques while developing a series of prints and collaborating on a bound publication.
Wednesdays, Sept. 30–Nov. 4, 2026, 6–8 p.m. ET
Remembering Robert Coles
Photographer Alex Harris reflects on the life and legacy of Robert Coles — the late child psychiatrist and pioneering documentarian.
Writing about their decades-long collaboration, Harris recalls Coles’s commitment to listening to children and his belief that meaningful storytelling begins with attention, care, and presence.
“Looking at these pictures again, I can imagine Coles’s lifetime of listening to and engaging with children, both the joys and the burdens of that life. He opened the doors, for me, to a life of the mind and eye.”
Coles and Harris, along with William Chafe and Iris Tillman Hill, cofounded CDS in 1989.
Program Spotlights
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
A premier showcase for nonfiction cinema, the 28th annual event runs April 16–19 and will screen dozens of groundbreaking documentaries.
Doc+ Summer Program
The newest summer “plus” program at Duke offers undergraduate students hands-on experience working on real-world documentary projects.
Literacy Through Photography
LTP continues its decades-long work with Durham Public Schools, connecting picture-making with writing and critical thinking.
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