Eliot Dudik
Road Ends in Water
Change is descending upon an otherwise quiet, unhurried, unobtrusive, place. The main highway, U.S. Route 17, that bisects South Carolina’s “lowcountry,” north to south, is being widened to accommodate commerce, tourists, and urban refugees. Not only many homes, some historic, disappearing before the tracked blades of expansion, but also the new, faster thorough-fare encourages greater disregard and obliviousness to the charm and culture the basin harbors.
This collection of images and thoughts is a tribute to, and an acknowledgement of, the respect the modest souls of this region, obscure from the mainstream, deserve for their tenacity, good humor, social commitment, and acceptance of the ebb and flow of the often incomprehensible vagaries of existence.
A photographic adventure became an artistic journey and culminated in a unique awakening to an otherwise overlooked cultural phenomenon. While the road ends in water, it began there as well.
–
Eliot Dudik is a fine art photographer, currently exploring Southern culture and landscape in a large format documentary style. His first monograph, Road Ends in Water, was published in 2010.