From Lens to Lyrics: How One Documentary Studies Class Sparked a Life of Storytelling

Carol Bales

Evan Nicole Bell stands on stage with one hand on a white guitar and one pointing to the left


“Creation and expression has always been a big part of my life,” says Evan Nicole Bell, an award-winning artist and musician. 

As an undergraduate at Duke, Bell found a home for her passions at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies (CDS), where she ultimately designed her own major through Program II: Documenting Justice: The Role of Photographic Narratives in Activism. One particular documentary photography course she took during her first year — American Communities — profoundly shaped both her time at Duke and her artistic voice. 

“It was a very life-changing class,” she says. “Even though I don’t take photos with a camera anymore, I’m still a documentarian — with my words, with chords. I’m still telling stories.” 

WAYS OF SEEING

Bell is one of five Duke and CDS alumni featured in WAYS OF SEEING: A Film About the Impact of One Documentary Course on the Lives of Five Duke Alumni, which follows their journeys after taking the same semester-long course. Produced by former CDS students now working in the film industry, along with CDS instructors, the film reflects on how the course influenced their lives as they each pursued storytelling in different forms. 

In American Communities, which was first offered in 1974, students had one assignment: get to know and photograph an individual, group or neighborhood beyond campus. The seminar combined theoretical study with hands-on fieldwork and community engagement, drawing on the long tradition of American documentary work — from Lewis Hine to Dorothea Lange and the FSA photographers of the 1930s to Gordon Parks and the Civil Rights Movement.

Bell’s project was driven by her desire to change narrow portrayals of the African American community. “During freshman year, I watched a documentary that only showed one picture of Durham — the gangs and the drugs and the poverty,” she says in the film. “The project I did in the American Communities class was an antithesis to that documentary. I wanted to show the full gamut of Black life.” 

She began using her camera to capture everyday scenes of Black life in Durham. Her first documentary photos were of church services. 

“I just didn’t find them to be the most attractive photos,” she says. “My ISO was too low. Sometimes they were out of focus.” 

Course founder and instructor Alex Harris helped her see the power of storytelling through sequencing. “He saw three of the photos and he was like, ‘Wait, put them next to each other. Look at how the story is being told here.’ And when you see the three photos side by side, they're so much more powerful together than they are separately.” 
 

Three images of a woman on her knees praying
A triptych of Bell’s first documentary photographs. Image: Evan Nicole Bell

Bell's Way of Seeing

That insight — that storytelling transcends precision — became a guiding principle for Bell. 

“When you’re a documentary artist, you’re a storyteller, and so the aesthetics sometimes come second to the story,” says Bell. “Even now with music, I’m not going for technical perfection. I’m going for emotional impact, and I think that’s what my doc studies training helped teach me and helped undergird in my artistic practice.” 

While at Duke, she also photographed in barbershops and made portraits of Black military service members, and mounted two exhibitions: black and Faith in Color. She received a Julia Harper Day Award, a John Hope Franklin Student Documentary Award and a RIPP Documentary Arts Fellowship from CDS, as well as the C. Eric Lincoln Theology and Arts Fellowship and Residency from Duke University Chapel.
 

Bell stands on the steps of Duke Chapel discussing her photography exhibit.
Evan Nicole Bell discusses her exhibit, “Faith in Color,” which explores race and religion and was on display in Duke Chapel. Photo: Chris Sims


As a successful musician, Bell’s songs have received airplay in more than 25 countries and her videos have been played over 13 million times. This summer she received the prestigious Baker Artist Award in Music, presented by the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance for excellence in mastery of craft, depth of artistic exploration and unique vision. 

“All that documentary training that I got with Alex — and through my major that I created through Program II, where I combined public policy, history and documentary studies — laid the foundation,” Bell says. “Because, as they say in film, at the root of it all, it’s all just storytelling. Learning different techniques to tell stories, whether it’s your own story or someone else’s, you learn how to be vulnerable, be authentic, and that comes across whether it’s a photo or a song.”  
 

A nun sits in a church pew with her palms up on her lap and stained glass windows behind her
Bell’s favorite photograph, “Sister,” was part of her “Faith in Color” exhibition in Duke Chapel. At the time, Alex Harris praised Bell’s fine eye and ability to connect with people, noting that “her portraits are at once beautiful and full of mystery.” Image: Evan Nicole Bell


Bell says her music and songwriting are rooted in the blues, “a historically Black art form, an oral tradition, that originated in the American South." She sees it as directly connected to her interest in documentary storytelling and Black history. “The blues is in and of itself a form of documentary,” she says, “preserving voices and histories and carrying memory forward across generations.”

This year Bell collaborated with Grammy-nominated artist G. Love on a record honoring the late Mississippi Hill Country bluesman R.L. Boyce. Bell co-wrote and performed vocals and lead electric guitar on the track Feel Me Better, which was released last month and features R.L. Boyce’s final recordings. “To me, that project is a strong example of extending the spirit of documentary into music: preserving stories and voices through sound,” she says.

Legacy and Continuity

Evan Nicole Bell recently reunited with Alex Harris for a screening of WAYS OF SEEING at CDS. During the panel discussion that followed, Harris once again pointed out the broader story.

“I’m struck by the ways in which, if we’re lucky, we can remember a moment in our lives and create a through line to who we are now,” says Harris. “We can create a narrative that makes sense to us — how did we get here? And I think that’s very much what this course is about.”
 

Alex Harris sits in a chair on a stage with Evan Nicole Brown projected from Zoom to his right and another student in a chair on the far right.
Alex Harris speaks during a panel discussion with Bell and Jenny Labalme ’82, one of the first students to take the “American Communities” course. Photo: Carol Bales


The ideas behind the American Communities course led to the founding of CDS in 1989. In addition to Harris, the course has been taught at CDS by photographers Margaret Sartor and Bill Bamberger. This semester, Duke students are taking a similar course taught by Bamberger — continuing the legacy that has helped shape generations of storytellers.

Learn more about Evan Nicole Bell: 

The WAYS OF SEEING film was originally conceived by Colin Mutchler while returning to Duke in 2024 for his 25th class reunion. The film was produced by Alex Harris, Colin Mutchler, Catherine Orr, Elena Rue and Margaret Sartor, and created by StoryMine.

Top image: Evan Nicole Bell performs her rendition of Catfish Blues, a classic blues standard written by Robert Petway in 1941. Photo: Courtesy Bell