Bull City Summer converged a team of artists to document the 2013 season at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, making a record of the sights and sounds perhaps missed by journalism. International renowned photographers Alex Harris, Frank Hunter, Kate Joyce, Elizabeth Matheson, Leah Sobsey, Alec Soth, Hank Willis Thomas and Hiroshi Watanabe, and a team of writers led by Adam Sobsey were on the team. The resulting book was also accompanied by exhibitions at the North Carolina Museum of Art and the Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh, along with a feature documentary film by Ivan Weiss, Leaving Traces, which was selected in the Fall of 2014 for the Baseball Hall of Fame Film Festival in Cooperstown, NY and the On Photography Film Festival in Amsterdam, demonstrating the unique crossover nature of the project. Bull City Summer was covered by the New York Times, the New Yorker, Harper’s, Mother Jones, Slate, ARTnews, and two French art magazines, among others.
“Crash Davis, from “Bull Durham,” is nowhere to be seen in images that sidestep most of the clichés of baseball photography.”
– The New York Times
“captures not only the atmosphere at the games and in the stadium but also the complexities of being a minor-league baseball player”
– The New Yorker
“Capturing the quiet beauty of baseball…”
– Slate
“The moments captured here are small and transitory but nonetheless make up a season at the Durham Bulls ballpark.”
– Paris Review
“A rich photo book interspersed with smart, poignant essays about the game’s rhythm, its injustice, and its occasional grace.”
– Mother Jones