These images reveal a whole new perspective on America’s Civil War re-enactors. But they also aim to spark conversations about two things that touch us all: life and death.
For generations, enthusiasts and history buffs have been spending their weekends re-staging historic clashes of the War Between the States, pretending to lose their lives on the battlefield.
Dudik uses his camera to study these faces while they fake death. Some have their eyes closed. Some, open. Some looking away, others looking directly at us. The subject is unsettling. But because we know they’re really alive, it’s somehow captivating.
“I think there’s a shifting back and forth between life and death as you look at them,” Dudik said. “When there’s this oddness and this shifting, I think it holds our attention a little longer, which hopefully brings us into each of our own individual conversations about what life and death means and what war means to us as individuals.”
–
Lately, Dudik admits life has become a little crazy, as he juggles teaching at Virginia’s College of William and Mary while helping create the school’s first formal photography program.
“Teaching and being intimately involved in an academic art department is a great inspiration and motivation and it provides an incredible collaborative community,” Dudik said. “And I’m very thankful for that.”
Eliot Dudik is a photographer and professor at the College of William and Mary. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
