Eliot Dudik

From the series Broken Land

Eliot Dudik is a photographic artist exploring the connection between culture, landscape, memory, and politics. Deep seated and sustained interest in the history of photography has guided much of his research and practice throughout his artistic career. His first monograph, ROAD ENDS IN WATER, was published in 2010. 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. His photographs have been exhibited in cities across the United States such as, Los Angeles, New York City, Washington DC, San Francisco, Houston, and Baltimore.

Eliot graduated cum laude from the College of Charleston in 2007, receiving a Bachelors of Science in Anthropology and a Bachelors of Art in Art History. He received his Masters of Fine Art in photography with honors at the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2010. Eliot joined the University of South Carolina faculty in the fall of 2011 as an adjunct professor of photography.

Interview conducted by Allison Jarek and Ashley Kauschinger 

Note: Click on an image to view larger 

From the series Broken Land

Light Leaked: What drew you to creating work about the American Civil War?

Eliot Dudik: I have been terrified by the idea of war in general since I was a young child. Whether watching a film portraying a particularly horrific war, or reading a book describing the hardships, I have never been able to imagine myself within the ranks. So my interest began with astonishment that others could face certain death on a battlefield and fight heroically, while all I can imagine for myself is something that looks an awful lot like a fainting goat.

These interests were compounded when I moved to South Carolina, about ten years ago, and very quickly found conversations turn toward aspects of the American Civil War at a shocking frequency. I am also attracted to the idea of cultural memory and the way events of the past are remembered or recounted in differing ways based on lived experience and the passing of narratives.

My goal is that the landscapes I present come alive with the acts of war, and cause folks to consider the divides in this country during the mid-19th century, comparing those divides to those that exists today in our culture and politics.

From the series Still Lives

LL: Do your bodies of work, Broken Land and Still Lives, inform one another? How has this work developed over time?

ED: The STILL LIVES series grew out of the BROKEN LAND series. I had started visiting reenactments to make landscape images with the acts of war happening upon them. Initially, I thought the reenactments were outlandish, not being able to understand the drive that causes participants to travel long distances to reenact bloody battles. I learned a lot from reenactors and from some readings about why they do what they do, none of which was what I envisioned, and decided to embrace their tenacity and immortalize them above the landscape they fight for. For me, the two bodies of work use similar subject matter to communicate different things, with some overlap.

From the series Broken Land

LL: How did you decide to use the diptych in Broken Land? 

ED: Although they certainly look like diptyches, they are actually one image, exposed simultaneously within the camera. A close friend allowed me to borrow his 8x20 Korona view camera, and I was trying to figure out how I could use color film in it. Traditionally, only black and white film was available for the 8x20. I thought I would try to build a jig that would allow two sheets of color 8x10 film to come together, and slide into the 8x20 inch film holder. The separation in the film also lent to concepts I was interested in exploring, namely cultural and political divides in this country.

From the series Still Lives

LL: Describe what a day of photographing is like for you. What do you look forward most when going out on a shoot?

ED: I'm afraid to anyone else, I am awfully boring when I go out to photograph, which is a real bummer since I enjoy having company. Typically, my outings involve a lot of driving, looking, driving without looking, reversing, parking, looking, getting out of the car and looking, walking, lugging a ton of gear somewhere, setting up, and making a photograph. There isn't anything I enjoy more. My heart is always racing when I'm on the hunt, and I try to balance that a bit with NPR and sunflower seeds. The unknown is what I look forward to the most when preparing to go photograph. Not knowing what I will find or who I will meet is always the most thrilling part, which is probably the same reason I am keen to explore antique and junk shops.

From the series Broken Land

LL: What advice do you have for fellow photographers on time management, money, promotion, and continuing to make art?

ED: Oh boy. Find it, find it, do it, do it.

Nothing about being an artist is easy. Artists know that, or soon will. Having some control over the whole mess (time management, money, promotion, continuing to make art) is the unglamorous, behind-the-scenes art of being an artist. The vast majority of us cannot make a living strictly from our artwork, so another form of income is generally necessary. This severely complicates time management. 9-5? Forget full-time, being an artist is a full-life job. Be prepared to work long hours at your day job, and even longer hours in your studio. The best thing we have going for us is our creativity; it would be a terrible waste if our creativity was limited solely to our artwork. We need to be imaginative in all aspects of our lives to have a sustainable art practice. When looking for employment to put food on the table, think creatively. What can you do that will also somehow enhance or enable your artwork? My favorite example was a brilliant move by my friend, Mark Dorf, where in after finishing his undergraduate degree in photography, he moved to Hudson, NY and got a job at a carpentry business. Importantly, Mark was making work at that time that consisted of installed constructions in the landscape. The place of work not only gave him a paycheck to survive, but also gave him the tools, facility, and materials to create his artwork. Brilliant.

From the series Broken Land

Money is a major concern for most of us. Art, and especially photography, is expensive, and doesn't have an end to its expense if you allow it. Similar to time management and the job front, be creative with the money you have and in the ways you seek funding. I like to buy good equipment once, rather than upgrading year after year. I find this to be a sound investment with everything excluding digital equipment... You're on your own there. I suggest making a 5-10 year plan, even in your head, as to who you are as an artist, and where you want to be. Make note of the equipment you must have to sustain your artistic career, and slowly try to piece it together. I don't buy anything new. It just doesn't make sense to me. I do my research on used equipment and shop around until I find exactly what I need for less than I've seen it previously. I try to encourage my students to start building their studios while they are students. Walking out of school, where you had a perfectly equipped and maintained studio, and into a world where you are largely on your own, is the scariest step. Start small, but do your best to begin building your workspace as soon as possible. Students are graduating from art programs and schools in great numbers, and I feel many of them drop out of the art making routine relatively quickly because they lack the space, equipment, time, money, and community that had enabled them the previous four years. It is vitally important to make a plan early to sustain your artwork, continually assess your plan, and make adjustments.

From the series Broken Land

Once we accept that we are artists, it is up to us to promote our work. Especially in the beginning, no one else is going to do it for us. As we reach certain levels of success, the promotion of our work often takes on a life of its own, and efforts to promote are multiplied, which doesn't mean our job is finished, it just means we are receiving some help. Enter contests, juried shows, and apply for grants. Achieving any of these does wonders at promoting your work and builds your resume at the same time. Submit for solo exhibitions, and put together a thoughtful gallery packet. Building and sustaining your network is also significantly important. Set aside time to get out and meet people at conferences, gallery/museum openings, portfolio reviews, etc. I use Facebook a lot to continue relationships with folks I meet at these places. It helps me keep up to date with what everyone is doing, keep my network informed as to what I am doing, and learn about related news and opportunities that could be beneficial.

Lastly, on continuing to make art, I feel it's largely based on your ability and desire to do all of the above. If you need to make art, then you will find a way to do so. If you're not making art, but feel the need to, then determine what it is that's standing in your way, and kick it aside, unless it's a baby. If it's a baby, then kick something else aside, preferably not a person.

Allison Jarek

Allison Jarek is an American photographer whose work often explores themes such as female identity, personal journeys, and man's relationship with nature. She received her BFA in Photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design and currently resides in Dallas, Texas, where she is pursuing an MFA in Photography at Texas Woman's University. Her work has been shown nationally, at venues such as PhotoPlace Gallery, Castell Photography Gallery, and 500X Gallery.

Project Statement: Crossings and Unions

This body of work explores transcendentalist philosophy in relation to my personal experiences. There is an inherent spirituality within nature, and an undeniable connection that man shares with it. It is not man that is divine, but nature as a whole. It is this divinity, spirituality, and pure energy that I have created a visual language, through 4x5 black and white landscapes and digital manipulation, to give a physical manifestation. The resulting images depict surreal, dream-like environments that reflect these themes and question the audience’s perception of reality, encouraging further reflection on how the audience views the world, and, more specifically, the land.

 

Jamie Carayiannis

Jamie Carayiannis is a fine art photographer from Northern Virginia. Primarily interested in the landscape, her work addresses the complex relationships that humans develop with their environments. More recently she has been interested in exploring her own energy use and its connection to coal extraction processes. Jamie graduated from James Madison University with a BFA in Studio Art and minor in Spanish and earned her MFA in Photography from the Savannah College of Art & Design. She currently resides in Northern Virginia and is an Adjunct Photography Instructor at the Art Institute of Washington - Dulles.

Power Statement

The photographic body of work, Power, is an examination of energy use. Specifically, Power explores coal and the industry’s use of mountaintop removal mining processes. This series of photographs contextualizes my own energy consumption and considers how communities in the Southwest region of my home state of Virginia have been negatively affected. Further, Power addresses concerns regarding the photograph’s ability to serve as a viable method of scientific measurement while examining the relationship between performance and photographic documentation. I have conducted and documented a series of small-scale experiments and performances that aim to demonstrate the magnitude of mountaintop removal mining’s impact. In an effort to provide the viewer with a greater sense of place, Power also includes a series of landscape images of the affected region. Together, the two sets of images speak to and inform one another. I am simultaneously critical of and complicit in the issue of energy consumption.

Margaret Cogsdill

Margaret Cogsdill, originally from Atlanta, Georgia, received her BA in Philosophy from The College of Charleston in South Carolina. Later she studied photography at Georgia State University and The Savannah College of Art and Design. In 2013 she received her MFA in Imaging Arts from Rochester Institute of Technology. Her work explores themes related to memory, loss and nostalgia. She is currently a contemporary artist based in upstate New York.

View more of Margaret's work here

Artist Statement

The Space Between Us explores the notion of loss as an overarching theme by examining a mother’s illness and its profound impact on her daughter. My work is inspired by a desire to understand my relationship with my mother, Caroline. Throughout my life I have struggled to accept her illness and its impact on me. Through photography, performance, and imaginative play I am able to initiate a new relationship with her and to explore intimacy, connection, nostalgia, and loss. Through this body of work, my mother and I enter into a world of our imagination where we collaborate as artist and mother. We work from a desire to express a time before she was ill and to recognize and reinvent who we are now, and who we can become in the future. As a daughter I turn my lens towards my mother as well as towards my own legacy. I incorporate the familial through a lineage of women and investigate the domestic spaces they inhabit. I look to my grandmother’s house and the surrounding landscape as a place of refuge and contemplation while also shedding light on feelings of fear, melancholia, and disorientation. Woven together, these images create a narrative that speaks to the complexity, richness and ambiguity of our relationship. he fragmented narrative relects my inability to wholly make sense of my mother’s illness. I have struggled to understand, but I am let trying to embrace the uncertainty and meaning of my circumstances.

Ashley M. Jones

Ashley M. Jones is a large format photographer practicing within the broad genre of social documentary photography. She is originally from Largo, Florida, and now resides in Savannah, Georgia. Jones received her MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design and her BA from the University of South Florida. Her work has been featured in American Oxford, Incandescent, ToneLit, and New Landscape Photography. She is actively exhibiting nationally and internationally in both group and solo exhibitions. She is also the Co-Curator and co-editor of Tathata.

View more of her work here 

Frogtown to Victory Project Statement 

The mass production and relative affordability of the automobile in the early 20th century resulted in considerable changes to our nation’s infrastructure and the need to intersect highway systems with urban neighborhoods. As a resident of Savannah, I am fascinated by the rich history and historic architecture of the city. However, there is a stark division between the restored and legally protected buildings within the central National Historic Landmark District and the struggling, run down neighborhoods that surround it. I am specifically interested in the at-risk neighborhoods along Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and the ways in which they have been impacted by the construction of the Interstate 16 flyover. This elevated section of Interstate 16, the Earl T. Shinholster Bridge, held it’s official ribbon cutting in 1967. The construction of the interstate coincided with several other large-scale urban renewal projects including the construction of Kayton and Fraiser homes south and east of the flyover. It intersects with the Westside of Savannah in the historically African American “Frogtown” neighborhood—a neighborhood that has been on the decline since the interchange was completed. In 2010 I began photographically documenting the homes, businesses, and churches in the area immediately surrounding the flyover. My documentation has since expanded to include neighborhoods south of Frogtown and extending several blocks south to Victory Drive. This area includes Cuyler-Brownsville, a neighborhood similarly impacted by connection of 37th Street to I-16. My photographs depict the current state of this community and the architectural structures that remain to provide an understanding of the historic and contemporary contexts of this community. I am further exploring local movements to renew and revive Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and the neighborhoods immediately impacted by the Interstate.

Photo Friday: Sarah Horan

Originally from the Hudson Valley, New York, Sarah Horan earned her Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts Education from the State University of New York in New Paltz in 2010. During this time, she consistently worked with the Dia: Arts Foundation in their location in Beacon, NY. She is currently earning her Master of Fine Art Degree in Photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design and anticipates completing her thesis work this upcoming November. Upon graduating, she plans to begin teaching at the college level while continuing to pursue her own creative endeavors.

View more of Sarah's work here

‘Contact,’ is a photographic body of work in which human vulnerability is explored by showcasing the nude form and the immediate space it inhabits. It is instinctual to shy away from sharing the intimate details of our lives and bodies with others, let alone agreeing to be physically touched by a photographic recording device that threatens to expose what it comes into contact with in unpretentious yet uncompromising detail. The bodies of my subjects are indexically recorded with the use of a hand-held scanner. Beyond the few millimeters of extreme detail found in each individual piece, the remainder of the body fades in to a hazy blur, allowing the anonymity of the individual to remain intact. 

Although the act of scanning a nude form is akin to a sterile and callous operation, I approach it as a form of tenderness, resulting in intimate and emotionally charged imagery. I then piece together the individual scans to construct a sense of the whole with the knowledge of never being able to fully reconstruct what had stood before me. Through the fragmentation that results, the forms are as conflicted as they are harmonious. 

Logan Rollins

Logan Rollins is a photographer whose work explores issues of homosexual identity and camp. He received his BFA from Texas Women’s University and is currently pursuing his MFA at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Inspired by historical paintings and photographs, his images provide a cultural context through which he explores his own sexuality. His work has been exhibited throughout the South and in various magazines, as well as online publications. Rollins recently contributed to a panel for the LGBTQ caucus at SPE Chicago, discussing gay and queer artistic identity within academia today. He currently lives and works in Savannah, Georgia.

View more of Logan's work here 

Ashley Kauschinger: What is the process of constructing the performances of identity in these photographs? Is it a collaboration with the subject? How much do you direct them?

Logan Rollins: With this project it became especially clear that I was walking a fine line in terms of taste and that I had to be very careful in how I constructed each image. Each piece initially begins as a sketch, or thumbnail, making my process pretty straightforward and deliberate. I often find that when I pre-visualize an image it gives me a clearer path than when I just go out and shoot. As the work developed, each image often, but not always, changed from its original plan. This is where collaboration with the model became key. The models would often bring their own ideas and personality to the shoot, knowing that the resulting image wasn’t necessarily about their own individuality. This resulted in some interesting experiences and enlightening moments. In terms of constructing these “performances”, the titles became integral to the piece itself. Sometimes a title would even manifest before the idea of the image itself.

When it came to directing the models it really depended on the person in question and their level of comfort with sitting in front of the lens. Those who were more active and participatory really helped me understand the project better. Their questions often led to a deeper insight into the project.

AK: What are you thoughts behind photographing stereotypical ideas of homosexuality?

LR: This work has allowed me to better understand my own gay identity. I have often felt like an outsider within my own community. Because of this, I wanted to play with stereotypical representations of gay subcultures. While it doesn’t change this outsider feeling I have, it does give me a way to exist and participate within the gay community in the best way I know how. Playing with these perceptions is what I find interesting as it really questions the push and pull of masculine and feminine modes of expression. This in my mind forms a core of what it means to be homosexual; are you masc or femme? 

There is an idea within the basis of camp culture that it is sincere in its insincerity. I am using stereotype to subvert these perceptions of what gay identity is and should be, at least from my own perspective. Instead of stereotype I should use the word archetype since it becomes less sociologically loaded. I call them stereotypes, or archetypes, because they aren’t really representations of who the model is, but rather that they are characters representing what I consider gay representation.

AK: I feel a tension created between the raw energy of the photographs and the staged quality that they possess. How do you balance this? Do you ever take documentary photographs?

LR: It becomes a very careful balancing act, but I really tend to follow my instincts. I went into the project knowing that I wanted to break fundamental rules of image making. To do so, my post-processing became an interesting mix of pushing the image too far and then having to pull it back to create a visually interesting composition. I seldom work with the full image frame. The power to crop an image is one of my most valuable tools. I have found that balancing the work requires a lot of trial and error. Knowing when to abandon an image to strengthen the body of work as a whole is just as important as the images that remain within the series. This is something I still struggle with. It can be hard when you are so close to the work. My work tends to be conceptual in nature so to me it is about as far as you can get from documentary. The closest I’ve ever gotten to it is the occasional street work. I prefer to construct a image than to search one out. Speaking only for myself, I find more truth in the staged image that explores a message rather than a project that directs me to a codified conclusion. The beautiful thing about photography is that it often raises more questions than it answers, and I am okay with that.

AK: Is working in a "so bad it's good" style liberating? As a graduate student, I'm often directed to perfection. Did you have to fight against this?

LR: This project has become quite liberating. We are told that we have to learn the rules so that in the end we can know when to break them. Makeshift Theatre is my testament to that idea. Before this project started I was trying to do everything “perfect”, or at least my perception of that ideal. And it was all a miraculous failure. In my frustration and desire to really find an idea I could share, I stumbled upon this project. It no longer resembles its beginnings, but it has shaped me in more ways than I can really express, and that is where my liberation comes from.

Sometimes I think people who see my work initially believe that my skill is sub-standard to what is required of a graduate student. Yet, most people seem receptive to at least discussing the ideas behind the work so this thought is most likely a matter of perspective. In the end, I have found that the fight is often within myself. I have a desire to take photos in a manner considered traditional and “correct” and with other projects this is appropriate. But I think the conflict means that I am not playing it safe, which I believe is what graduate school is really teaching you. To be a master in my mind is to dream, to dare, and to not play it safe. Admittedly, you do need to know and understand the technical skills of your chosen medium, but it is the path that isn’t safe that becomes the most rewarding.

Photo Friday: Hannah Texie Bailey

In the realms of the unreal, 2012

Hannah Texie Bailey was born in Houston, Texas. Growing up in the city, she was equally influenced by ideas of the art world and the romance of the Texas tall tale. She is a mixed media artist who works with found and reclaimed material. Currently, Bailey is working on a series of sculptures as she finishes her last year at Savannah College of Art and Design with a BFA in Painting. Her future plans are to move to West Texas, and continue to working in her studio.

You can contact Hannah through her e-mail: hannahtexiebailey@gmail.com

On her wedding day, 2012 

In this work, objects, settings and sculptures are creating an intimate environment of memory that is influenced by folk tales, stories, and storytellers. The objects in the pieces become artifacts that create personal and universal narratives.

The series is influenced by the temporal American landscape, and the haunting desire society has to preserve it. I am exploring the ideas of self-sufficiency and self-preservation through my works using reclaimed and found items. This combines with the influence of my personal American History that I am exploring with family heirlooms and the storytellers from my bloodline. Using family photographs from my parent’s marriage, I am preserving their life together while it is presently falling apart. These works are an alter into a different realm, that explore mystery and hope. 

Pam n i, 2012

Lipstick and Cigarettes, 2012

Ode to Texie, 2012 

Raised by a homecoming queen, 2012