In completing this project, Eliot Dudik says he has, “…since learned that the motivations compelling [Civil War] re-enactors are incalculably complex, but generally address themselves to the preservation of history and appropriate honor for the fallen.”

Dudik’s series, Still Lives, is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography July 14th through August 28th, 2016. An opening reception will take place on July 14th, 2016 from 7-8:30pm. Eliot Dudik will lead a workshop and gallery talk for members at a later date. The talk and reception are free and open to the public.

“My deeper curiosity and exploration began after hearing a re-enactor say
I don’t die anymore,” states Dudik. “…the idea of controlling one’s death, choosing when and where to perform and re-perform one’s demise, says something powerful about our relation to historical representation—about our need for it, and about its conditions and limitations.”
“These portraits provide a sense of the diversity of actors existing in this community, many of whom devote their lives to this performance, and strive to immortalize them in a fabricated state of tranquility as they hover above the ground they fight for.”

Eliot Dudik is a photographic artist, educator, and bookmaker exploring the connection between culture, memory, landscape, history, and politics. In 2012, Dudik was named one of PDN’s 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch and one of Oxford American Magazine’s 100 New Superstars of Southern Art. He was awarded the PhotoNOLA Review Prize in 2014 for his Broken Land and Still Lives portfolio, resulting in a book publication and solo exhibition. Broken Land was most recently published as a feature in the July/August 2015 issue of Smithsonian Magazine. FLASH FORWARD 2015 chose the series for publication and exhibition in Toronto and Boston.

His photographs have been installed in group and solo exhibitions across
the United States and Canada. Eliot taught photography at the University of South Carolina from 2011 to 2014 before founding the photography program within the Department of Art and Art History at the College of William & Mary where he is currently teaching and directing the Andrews Gallery at the college.