DURHAM, NC.- The public is invited to two talks this week at the Center for Documentary Studies, offered in conjunction with the Literacy Through Photography Institute being held May 9 - 13 at CDS. Dwayne Dixon will present images and writing made by Karen teenage refugees and a discussion of the intentions,ethical thought, process, and outcomes of the From Journey to Dream project conducted on the Thai-Burma border in 2000.

Dixon is currently a third-year doctoral student in cultural anthropology at Duke University. He is studying youth culture, consumer goods, and the mythologies that kids create to navigate the educational and economic landscape of contemporary Japan. This research draws on his experiences teaching in the Japanese school system and his five years coordinating the Literacy Through Photography program founded by photographer Wendy Ewald at the Center for Documentary Studies. While at CDS he carried out collaborative photo projects with Durham schoolchildren and their teachers, conducted workshops for educators throughout the United States and worked as a consultant for The Nature Consevancy's Photovoice project in Yunnan Province, China. He holds a B.F.A. from the College of New Jersey and has written for punk zines and encyclopedias. He has had exhibitions of collaborative photographs in New York and Durham. Throughout his work he combines activism and art, acting for radical change through education, critical scholarship around children and childhood, and collaborative art-making.

Wendy Ewald is director of Literacy Through Photography, a program of the Center for Documentary Studies that teaches elementary- and middle-school students to express themselves through photography and writing. A senior research associate at CDS, she has been involved in several special projects for teachers and students in the Durham Public Schools. These include Black Self/White Self and American Alphabets, which explore race and ethnicity in America. Ewald has worked as a photographer, teacher, and documentary writer for more than thirty years. She has had exhibitions in major museums in the United States and in Europe. She has published seven books and received many grants and fellowships, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992. At CDS, Ewald teaches the course Literacy Through Photography: Teaching Photography and Writing in Elementary and Middle Schools; she also has been co-teaching a Duke/UNC course on various approaches to documentary photography since Spring 2003. Her book I Wanna Take Me A Picture was published by CDS and Beacon Press in 2001.