When a photographer and writer collaborate successfully, they can produce something more powerful and insightful than the work of a single artist alone. That's the idea behind the successful photographer/writer duos we p rofiled in our August issue, and it's the guiding spirit of the Lange-Taylor documentary prize, administered by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Each year tthe $20,000 prize is awarded to a writer and a photographer in the early stages of a documentary project to support their collaboration.

Past winners have included photographer Donald Weber and writer Larry Frolick, who won in 2006 for their proposal to study the effects of globalization on the Ukrainian underclass. This year the prize went to photographer Teru Kuwayama and writer Christian Parenti, who plan to use the money to examine Pakistan "through the lives of its myriad ethnic and tribal groups, and its vast population of refugees and displaced people."

To better understand what makes a winning Lange-Taylor Prize application, we asked these journalists to share excepts from both their submissions with PDN and our readers:

Donald Weber and Larry Frolick's Collaborative Statement

Teru Kuwayama and Christian Parenti's Collaborative Statement
Alexa Dilworth of the Center for Documentary Studies advises teams who are applying for the prize to submit a tight, coherent edit of the photographer's work. "As we see only 20 images, it's essential that the images hold together, that they represent a clear and unique vision for approaching the proposed project."

Writers have to submit a writing sample.  Straightforward journalism and academic prose is usually rejected. Dilworth notes that fiction writers like Kent Haruf are among the past prize winners. 

For this year's prize, Parenti submitted "Our Battles Joined," an article published in Playboy about his relationship with Afghan reporter/fixer Ajmal Naqshbandi who had been killed by the Taliban. "What stood out for the judging panel was that this story from Afghanistan was personal," says Dilworth, "that it was more documentary than journalistic, if you will, in that it relates larger, complicated events through the story of one man."

Among the documents required for the application, the "collaborative statement" is important, Dilworth says. This is where the photographer/writer duo explain how they plan to collaborate, and demonstrate to the judges that the work they will do in different mediums will neither compete with nor mirror the other’s.

In the statement Frolick provided, he refers to a previous collaboration with Weber as part of their "ongoing dialogue on Image versus Word, and the relationship of mass media to social change during historical crises."  At the end of Kuwayama and Parenti's statement, they note, "We challenge the conventions of our industries, and we challenge each other’s perspectives as well."