Jesse Dukes

Biography

Jesse Dukes is an independent writer and documentary maker. He studied radio at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, worked for With Good Reason at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and is a principal at Big Shed. His VQR essay “Babu on the Bad Road” was included in The Best American Travel Writing 2013. He is a VQR Contributing Editor.

See Work

REPORTING / Summer 2014

Lost Causes

By Jesse Dukes ,  Photography by Jonno Rattman

Confederate reenactors take pride in their Southern heritage, but struggle with the centrality of slavery and racism to the Confederacy.
REPORTING

The Growing Evangelical Population in Latin America

By Jesse Dukes

I have been living in a small town in Guatemala’s Highlands for the last few months, and fireworks at night are common. Yet around noon last Wednesday, I heard loud explosions and saw the tell-tale hanging smoke cloud indicating somebody...

ESSAYS / Winter 2013

Soundstage Tunisia

By Jesse Dukes

The future of Tunisia’s film industry—like that of the country itself—is uncertain. Filmmakers prefer stability in their working conditions, and the instability triggered by the revolution has threatened a once reliable industry, which over...

Star Wars sandcrawler set at Chott Al Jerrid, Tunisia, 1976. Courtesy of Lucas Film Ltd.
INTERVIEWS / Winter 2013

Mark Hamill Remembers Tunisia

By Jesse Dukes

Twenty-four-year-old Mark Hamill auditioned for the role of “Luke Starkiller” on December 30, 1975. Two and a half months later, he landed in Djerba, Tunisia, took a harrowing taxi ride to Tozeur, and began playing the role that would...

REPORTING / Winter 2012

Babu on the Bad Road

By Jesse Dukes ,  Photography by Sarah Elliott

A faith healer has brought hope to hundreds of thousands—but he has also convinced them to abandon HIV medication.

Young Maasai beg for food or change from a bus full of pilgrims on their way to see Reverend Ambilikile Mwasapila, a faith healer in Tanzania’s remote district of Loliondo.
PHOTOGRAPHY

Consider the Lobstermen

By Jesse Dukes ,  Photography by Travis Dove

The Maine lobster industry has a reputation as one of the best managed fisheries in the world—but few have considered how this ethic is enforced.

REPORTING / Summer 2011

Consider the Lobstermen

By Jesse Dukes ,  Photography by Travis Dove

Rick Trundy does not like staying ashore, even when the wind is blowing twenty knots. It’s 4:30 in the morning in mid-April, early in the lobster season, and while most of the lobstermen in Stonington, Maine, are someplace warm, drinking...

ESSAYS / Winter 2011

Lions of the Deep

By Jesse Dukes ,  Photography by Thomas P. Peschak

The shot took years to set up. He had seen it in his mind’s eye and sketched it with pen and pad dozens of times: a bronze whaler shark charging upward into a tight school of sardines, jaws open improbably wide, a regal predator frozen in...