life as it's lived

In last summer's premier issue of DoubleTake, a magazine of journalism, prose, poetry, and photography, its editors wrote, "These days, much of what we know about each other, and much of what we learn -- from television, newspapers, and journals -- reinforces our separateness and confirms our distrust." According to the magazine's creators and co-editors, Robert Coles, the well-known author and child psychiatrist, and the photographer Alex Harris, the media fail to examine life as it is lived.

The journalism of DoubleTake is modeled on the tradition of the Muckrakers and specifically the 1941 book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, in which James Agee and Walker Evans documented the lives of impoverished Alabama sharecroppers. A requirement for this kind of reporting is empathy, the reporters' ability to get a feel for their subjects' shoes.

In this winter's issue, for instance, Eric Bates, a reporter for The Independent Weekly of Durham, North Carolina, investigated the "exporting of southern forests." Rather than focusing on "ecological destruction," Bates's article portrayed the lives and concerns of both environmentalists and those who make a living off the forests.

 The magazine is also committed to publishing nonprofessional "voices and visions." In a section called "Exploration," everyday people tell of their experiences. In the spring 1996 issue, a seven-year-old girl describes, and depicts with crayon, losing her mother in a car crash.

The quarterly, which is published by the Center For Documentary Studies at Duke University, gives word and image equal weight. Photographs are printed on thick, matte-finish paper and tell their own story unsupported by text. Harris calls them "narrative photographs." They are distinct from illustrative photographs or those arising solely from a personal aesthetic, he says, in that they seek to make the lives of those they depict "accessible" to the audience. They are photographs that tell stories.

At times, DoubleTake seems so earnest and do-gooderly that it recalls the estimation Agee once gave of his own work, that it was for "all those who have a soft place in their hearts for the laughter and tears inherent in poverty viewed at a distance." And while the magazine's concepts may be inspiring, its emotion and earnestness can seem a little overpowering. William Powers, a media critic at The Washington Post, says he is "loyal" to DoubleTake but that it gives him a "weird, subtle feeling that I'm not good enough to be reading it," adding, "I come away feeling strangely guilty."

A couple of its well-known contributors, though, find DoubleTake unusual, maybe even unique, in contemporary journalism, and they sing its praises. Says Susan Faludi, a Pulitzer Prize winner who wrote about laid-off McDonnell Douglas workers for the magazine's fall issue: "You can subscribe to dozens of magazines and not know anything about the lives of the majority of the people who live in this country. Anything that reveals an ounce of concern or passion about humanity is looked at askance." Bill McKibben, who wrote about the near-utopian state of Kerala, India, for the premiere issue, calls it a magazine "for grown-ups." In America, he says, "We shout about everything all the time. I think calm is more useful."

As DoubleTake moves into its second year, with a circulation of nearly 30,000, the editors envision the magazine's winning broad appeal. A $10-million grant from the Lyndhurst Foundation of Chattanooga should guarantee publication for at least five years, and during that time, DoubleTake promises to provide a space for those ambitious enough to take on the delicate task of observing and describing life as participants.

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