By Michelle Hines, University Relations
Contact: (336) 334-5371
Posted 8-15-09
GREENSBORO, N.C. – University Libraries acquired the collection of award-winning photographer and longtime art department faculty member Arnold Doren at an opportune time. The gift, which includes photos of performers and revelers at Woodstock, came just before the down and dirty three-day music festival’s 40th anniversary. 
Twenty images from Doren’s Woodstock pics are on display through Sept. 18 in the second floor main lobby outside the Hodges Reading Room in Jackson Library. Doren’s collections includes stunning black-and-white photographs of Woodstock icons like Jimi Hendrix and some revealing photos of the crowd, including a few of outdoor “community” bathing.
Archivist Betty Carter enjoys showing off the 70-plus boxes of Doren’s prints, slides and negatives. He traveled the world with his cameras, she says, capturing landscapes, still lifes and candid portraits from China, Italy, Canada and the American Southwest.
“He seems to have had a thing about shoes and feet,” Carter says. “Some of his portraits just focus on a person’s feet.”
Doren, who died in 2003, was a faculty member at UNCG from 1978-2002. The entire Doren collection will be opened to the public once Carter and her team catalogue and preserve it. When she discovered the Woodstock pictures, she immediately pulled them for display because of the “perfect timing” with the Woodstock anniversary.
Doren shot 10 rolls of film at Woodstock, Carter says, and printed more than 35 images. Woodstock, which defined the Hippie era of the late ’60s and early ’70s, kicked off Aug. 15, 1969, on Max Yasgur’s 600-acre farm in Bethel, NY. Groups like the Who, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead performed there, and Hendrix closed the show with his ripping electric guitar version of the “Star Spangled Banner.”
For more information on the Doren Collection, contact University Archives at (336) 334-4045.
