The Visible Evidence community is a collection of scholars and practitioners engaged in research and debates on historical and contemporary documentary practice and nonfiction media culture.
Visible Evidence began as a conference at Duke University in 1993. Subsequent editions have been held on five continents, most recently in Istanbul, Turkey (2010), New York City, USA (2011), Canberra, Australia (2012), Stockholm, Sweden (2013), New Delhi, India (2014), Toronto, Canada (2015), Bozeman, USA (2016), Buenos Aires, Argentina (2017), Bloomington, Indiana (2018), and Los Angeles (2019).
Work presented at conferences focuses on the role of film, video and other media as record, witness, and voice of social reality, exploring a wide range of cultural, political, social, historical, ethnographic, aesthetic, and pedagogical questions and perspectives from fields such as film studies, communication studies, anthropology, architecture, art history, ethnic studies, queer studies, history, journalism, law, medicine, political science, geography, sociology, urban studies and gender studies.
In addition to the conference and this website, an associated series of books was established at the University of Minnesota Press in 1997. Twenty- eight volumes were published between 1997 and 2014. The series offers a forum for the in-depth consideration of the representation of the real, with books that engage issues bearing upon questions of cultural and historical representation, and that forward the work of challenging prevailing notions of the documentary tradition and of nonfiction culture more generally. More information on the future of the book series to come.
Click the link above to view the Governing Council’s current members and their affiliations.
Click the link to view the Visible Evidence Community Principles and Bylaws.
Click here to subscribe to or search the archives of the Visible Evidence Listserv.
Many universities offer programs in the study of documentary. We’ve compiled a list here. If you have a program you would like us to add, please contact us.
This list shares current titles in documentary film scholarship identified by community members as publications of value to the field. If you would like to recommend a book to add to this list, please contact Joshua Malitsky.
This list is a space to share current documentary events with the community. If you know of an event you would like us to add, please contact us. Please use the subject line “Documentary Event for VE Website” to help us quickly identify and post your event.
This website is hosted and managed by the Center for Documentary Research and Practice, part of the Media School at Indiana University in Bloomington. If you have questions or suggestions regarding this website, please contact us.