Whitman, Alabama: In conversation with Jennifer 張 Crandall, journalist/filmmaker/artist
Hearst Visiting Professional Jennifer 張 Crandall comes to UNC Hussman for a screening and discussion of her Emmy®-nominated documentary portrait series Whitman, Alabama.
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Jennifer Crandall is an award-winning artist, journalist and filmmaker whose work builds participatory, democratic forms of storytelling — inviting people to come into fuller view and audiences to rethink how they see and listen. Raised across Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Haiti, she brings a global sensibility to projects rooted in the specificity of individual lives.
At The Washington Post, she created the national Emmy-nominated video portrait series onBeing. She is the director of Whitman, Alabama, a 52-part living documentary — also a national Emmy nominee — that brings Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself into the voices of 21st-century Alabamians, offering a layered portrait of America from Alabama outward.
Her work has been honored by the Online News Association, the White House News Photographers Association and the Edward R. Murrow Awards. It has been exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the New York Public Library, and featured by The New Yorker, The Poetry Foundation and NPR.
Photo by Ginnard Archibald.