Meghan Duda

Biography

Meghan Duda creates atmospheric recordings of space and time with a collection of handmade pinhole cameras and camera-less image making techniques. After earning her bachelor degree in Architecture from Virginia Tech in 2005 she began traveling the country, developing a practice photographing vernacular architecture. Born in western Massachusetts and raised on the South Carolina coast, she finally settled in Fargo, North Dakota in 2007 and was struck by the vast prairie landscape. At this point her photographic focus shifted from architectural photography to experimental landscape photography. It was while pursuing an MFA at the University of North Dakota that she built her first handmade camera which she named the Trailer Obscura - a 5’ x 8’ pinhole camera on wheels that she uses to make large atmospheric recordings of the prairie.

As an Assistant Professor of Photography and Design at North Dakota State University, Duda continues to experiment with a variety of analog image making processes to explore themes of place, time and future ecologies. Duda has exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally at museums and galleries in Fargo, North Dakota; Park Rapids, Minneapolis, and Bloomington, Minnesota; Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska; Chicago, Illinois; Huntington, New York; and Aarhus, Denmark. Her work has been featured online on Lenscratch.com, Aint-Bad.com, donttakepictures.com, and FractionMagazine.com.

Ask Me

Who are your role models or inspiring folks?

Helene Binet, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Gordon Matta-Clark, Vera Lutter, Stephen Shore

Outside of art and design fields, what inspires you?

Landscape explorations, ecology, re-wilding

What do you wish you had known when you started out as a student/in this field?

That there are many, many paths to take in the design fields. Although I went into undergrad believing I would become an architect, I found so much more to love about the design field, and photography, and I was able to carve my own career path that looks very different than I thought it would going into school.

What was your most memorable meal?

It was at a small restaurant in a tiny village called Rovio in Switzerland. It was at the end of a very long hike up [and back down] an adjacent mountain, and we arrived in the dark, after walking through the narrow streets of the village. We were the only people in the restaurant, and we ordered pumpkin soup, which was served in a hollowed out pumpkin shell.

In your office, you can only have three things, one book, one tool, and one picture. What would they be and why?

The Nature of Photographs by Stephen Shore. It so eloquently puts into words all the things I know and feel about photography and it is nice to remind myself of that periodically. My camera, of course. The picture is hardest, because there are so many that are important to me. I think I would have to choose a photo of the dock at my family lake house, because it is my happy place and has served as my sanctuary on many occasions.