First announced in 1990, the Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize was created by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University to encourage collaboration between documentary writers and photographers in the tradition of the acclaimed photographer Dorothea Lange and writer and social scientist Paul Taylor. In 1941 Lange and Taylor published An American Exodus, a book that renders human experience eloquently in text and images and remains a seminal work in documentary studies.

 

The Lange-Taylor Prize is intended to support artists, working alone or in teams, who are engaged in extended, ongoing fieldwork projects that fully exploit the relationship of words and images in the powerful, persuasive representation of a subject. The prize is not awarded for completed projects or to support the production of a book, exhibit, website, or other outcomes.

 

All entries should have one thing in common: evidence that they were created with reliance on documentary methods—research and interviews—and immersive, long-term fieldwork.

 

We are interested in work that directs its gaze outward, that curiously engages with the world, and that is, as former CDS director Tom Rankin describes, “derived from an in-depth understanding of place, history, and the current situation, in concert with a personal relationship to the proposed work."

 

The winner receives $10,000, features in Center for Documentary Studies’ digital publications, and inclusion in the Archive of Documentary Arts at Rubenstein Library, Duke University. 

 

Submission Deadline: May 15, 2020

 

How to Enter and FAQ.

 

*Image: Gelatin silver print by Chinen Aimi, winner of the 2019 Lange-Taylor Prize.