Don Doll, S.J., L&C Trail photographs on exhibition

    (April 13, 2007) -  Fourteen Lewis & Clark Trail images by award-winning photographer Fr. Don Doll, S.J., are now on exhibition at the Center.

  The show, titled “On the Lewis & Clark Trail,” presents seven 20-by-54-inch panoramas, including “August 25, 1804 - Spirit Mound, Vermillion, South Dakota,” the hill where Native people believed spirits lived.

  Seven 20-by 30-inch images show sites encountered by the Corps of Discovery. Among them is “August 19, 1805 - Lemhi Pass, Continental Divide, Idaho/Montana,” where Capt. William Clark described the snowy terrain and an encounter with Native people at the dividing ridge.

  Signage for each photograph features an excerpt from the Journals of Lewis & Clark. The exhibit also includes a 27-minute taped presentation, drawn from an interview of Fr. Doll by Marcia Poole, director of the Center, and produced by G.R. Lindblade.

  “I love doing panoramas and that’s what made doing the Lewis & Clark exhibit so much fun,” says Doll, professor of Fine Arts at Creighton University and the Charles and Mary Heider Endowed Jesuit Chair. “Each day, I was up at sunrise. I set up camp only after the sun set so I could use that beautiful light at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day to photograph.”

  Fr. Doll made three trips during the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial to capture parts of the trail. He began at Wood River, Ill., near the site of the Corps of Discovery’s 1803-1804 winter camp. He encountered only rainy days as he traveled upriver to Omaha.

  His time near Fort Mandan, the expedition’s 1804-1805 winter camp, led to portfolio-quality cold weather pictures, including “Dec. 7, 1804 – Missouri River, South of Washburn, North Dakota.”

  His longest trip took him from Omaha to the Pacific Ocean. He camped along the way and canoed a portion of the Missouri River below Great Falls, Mont., where he made some of his most dramatic pictures.

  “If you’re photographing a trip, you have to give yourself time to follow your hunches,” says the photographer who shot both digitally and on film. “It was a great trip – a wonderful way to travel.”

  Doll regrets that he did not do the project in time to produce a book for the bicentennial. However, many of the photographs were used as part of a production of “Lewis and Clark Part One: Manifest Destiny,” a play written from the perspective of York, Clark’s slave, by Creighton theatre professor Alan Klem.

   “The Lewis & Clark Bicentennial ended last September, but Fr. Doll’s photographs inspire continued interest in the expedition,” says Poole. “His work encourages visitors to spend time seeing what the explorers may have seen and imaging what the explorers may have thought and felt more than 200 years ago.”

  The Center has hosted two other shows by Fr. Doll: “Vision Quest: Men, Women and Sacred Sites of the Sioux Nation” in summer 2006. “Vision Quest” was seen by more than 21,000 visitors. Fr. Doll’s “A Timely Encounter: Children of St. Augustine Indian Mission” ran from October 2006 through March.

  Fr. Doll’s work has been featured in National Geographic magazine; and a number of “Day in the Life” books, including America, California, Italy, Ireland, Passage to Vietnam, and Christmas in America. His photographs also have been published in “Crying for a Vision” (Morgan and Morgan Publishers) and “Vision Quest: Men, Women and Sacred Sites of the Sioux Nation” (Crown Publishers). He appears in the “Vision Quest” CD-ROM.

  Fr. Doll has received the Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Impact in Photojournalism in recognition of his work with Native people. He also has received the Nikon “World Understanding through Photography” award. He was named 2006 Nebraska Artist of the Year by the Nebraska Arts Council.

  He has photographed the work of Jesuits assisting Tsunami victims in India and Sri Lanka, and the educational work of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Uganda and Southern Sudan.

  A Milwaukee, Wis., native, Fr. Doll was a young Jesuit when he was assigned to St. Francis Mission on the Rosebud Reservation from 1962 to 1965. During that time he began working with a camera. He studied photojournalism at Marquette University, Milwaukee.

    The Center is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. It is located off I-29, exit 149. Admission, all programs, exhibits and activities are free. For more information call 712-224-5242 or visit www.siouxcitylcic.com.

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