See past projects at http://smalltown-usa.com/
A student project from 2018:
Susie Post-Rust is a veteran magazine and newspaper photojournalist who spent more than two decades documenting the lives of people in more than twenty countries. Her passion throughout her career has been in-depth documentary projects that reveal small communities and the people who live in them. For more than ten years she worked for National Geographic magazine, while also contributing to Life, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, and the New York Times, as well as nonprofit charity groups, including World Vision, the North Carolina Food Bank, Food for the Hungry, and Compassion International. In 1986 she was honored with the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Coverage of the Disadvantaged in recognition of her photographic essay Jerry: A Troubled Mind, the story of one man’s battle with Alzheimer’s Disease.
Post-Rust has taught at Duke since 2006. Her courses enable Duke Students to engage with the community outside university. She works to impart the experience of producing in-depth visual storytelling to her students. Most of her courses are service learning and involve a component of giving back to the community.
She has an MA in journalism from the University of Missouri at Columbia and a BSBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Post-Rust's work can be viewed at susiepostrust.com
Students explore the small town of Hillsborough, NC by each working on his or her own semester-long documentary project. Students choose topics they are interested in, and collectively these stories form a photographic study of the town. The goal of this class is for students to develop a deeper understanding of documentary photography. This will be accomplished through studying the work of masters in the field as well as producing their own projects in Hillsborough. By placing the class in the context of a small town, the course will emphasize the importance of developing relationships with subjects. As part of coursework, students learn to narrate their images, incorporating storytelling into their presentation. Readings will deal with the photographer's responsibility to the subject.
An important aspect of this class is that we will present the project to the community and the people that were photographed. Students will produce exhibition quality prints, and at the end of the semester, on Friday April 28th, students will have a public print exhibit of the projects in Hillsborough and a narrated presentation of each project. We have a website, and new student projects are added to it at the end of the semester: www.smalltown-usa.com
A camera is good to have, however the Center for Documentary Studies has cameras that can be checked out for the semester. Consent of instructor required. Students must have the ability to get to Hillsborough outside class times.
For a permission number, please email Susie Post-Rust at: postrust@duke.edu. Please send a brief description of your photographic experience and the reason for your interest in the class. I look forward to hearing from you!
Post-Rust
Instructor Consent Required
