Inspired by the 25th anniversary of the movie Bull Durham, the exhibition Bull City Summer at the North Carolina Museum of Art celebrates the 2013 season of minor league baseball’s Durham Bulls. World-renowned photographers Alec Soth, Hank Willis Thomas, Hiroshi Watanabe, Alex Harris, Frank Hunter, Kate Joyce, Elizabeth Matheson, Leah Sobsey, Jeff Whetstone, and video artist Ivan Weiss – at least one of them – hung out at the famous Durham Bulls stadium for each of 72 home games.
The artists were there to study and capture the people, passion and obsessive routines – on the field, in the dugouts, and in the stands. Opening before 2014 spring training, the exhibition (February 23–August 31, 2014) is produced by Sam Stephenson and his Rock Fish Stew Institute of Literature and Materials. (We are not making this up.) Local publisher Daylight Books will release a limited edition book Bull City Summer, featuring 129 photographs and the prose of Paris Review writer Adam Sobsey.
Leah Sobsey/Tim Telkamp, Wool E. Bull, 2013, tintype, whole plate 6 1/2 x 8 1/2 in., Courtesy of the artists, © 2013 Leah Sobsey/Tim Telkamp