"Broken Land/Still Lives," an exhibit of photographs by Eliot Dudik depicting locations and exploring themes related to the American Civil War, will open at the Rebecca Randall Bryan Art Gallery at Coastal Carolina University on Monday, July 13. The exhibit, which is free and open to the public, runs through Aug. 21, with a closing reception with the artist on Aug. 20 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the gallery.

"Broken Land" offers a series of color landscape photographs of Civil War battlefields in various weathers and seasons that invite the viewer to contemplate historic events and their meanings.

"Perspectives on the Civil War and contemporary culture are vast and deeply engrained in our heritage," says Dudik in a statement about the exhibit. "These photographs are an attempt to preserve American history, not to relish it, but recognize its cyclical nature and to derail that seemingly inevitable tendency for repetition."

"Still Lives" is a gallery of portraits of Civil War re-enactors. The individuals, shot in close-up, lie on the ground where they fall in the re-enactment battles, looking into the camera.

"The idea of controlling one's death, choosing when and where to perform and re-perform one's demise, is a fascinating study in psychology and consciousness," says Dudik. "These portraits provide a sense of the diversity of actors existing in this community, many of whom devote their lives to this performance." The photographs present them "in a fabricated state of tranquility as they hover above the ground they fight for."

"Broken Land/Still Lives" won the PhotoNOLA Review Prize in 2014. In 2012, Dudik was named one of Photo District News' 30 new and emerging photographers to watch and one of Oxford American magazine's 100 New Superstars of Southern Art. His work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and other U.S. cities.

The Bryan Gallery is located in the Thomas W. and Robin W. Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts at 133 Chanticleer Drive E. at CCU. The gallery is open Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. For more information, contact gallery director James Arendt at 843-349-6409.