Renowned photo documentarian to lecture at UND before heading to North Dakota oilfields

Kate Menzies

Document Type

News Article

Publication Date

2-4-2013

Campus Unit

College of Arts & Sciences

Abstract

Renowned photo documentarian to lecture at UND before heading to North Dakota oilfields

World renowned photographer Kyle Cassidy will be coming to the University of North Dakota to discuss "People, Places, and Things: Adventures in Documentary Photography."

At UND, Cassidy will examine the mediums of storytelling and how it has changed over the last decade at noon, Friday, Feb. 8, in the East Asia Room in the Chester Fritz Library. The event is sponsored by the Working Group in Digital and New Media and the Department of History.

Cassidy's presentation will be on the process of visual storytelling, drawing from his published works, photo essays and gallery shows. He will discuss how the medium has changed over the past decade into a much richer environment, how academics and artists can embrace and use this, how to connect to larger audiences and how the new mechanisms can be used to fund and facilitate research.

While in North Dakota, Cassidy also will be joining UND professors William Caraher and Bret Weber on their North Dakota Man Camp Project, pioneering research on special housing arrangements for oilfield workers in western North Dakota. Cassidy and the professors will head for Williston and Watford City, N.D., on Friday. Caraher is an associate professor of history and Weber is an assistant professor of social work.

Cassidy has been documenting America through photography since the 1990s. He has photographed a wide range of subjects, including mobsters, music subcultures, politicians, dominatrices, scholars and science fiction fans. He has also taken his projects global, capturing the lives of homeless orphans living in sewers as well as archaeological excavations in Egypt.

Cassidy's documentary photography book Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes was awarded Amazon.com's "Best 100 Books of 2007," "Best 10 Art Books of2007" and rave reviews from both Field and Stream and the Washington Post. His most recent book: War Paint: Tattoo Culture and the Armed Forces tells the stories ofveterans' body art.

Currently, he is working on a book project, titled Where I Write: Fantasy and Science Fiction Authors in Their Creative Spaces as well as a collection of portraits of rollerderby players.

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