The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, and its permanent collection is one of the world’s preeminent repositories of books, art and – especially germane in this case  – photographs that its curators judge to be representative of the American experience. 

That’s why Eliot Dudik, associate teaching professor of photography in William & Mary’s Department of Art & Art History, is honored to have his work become part of the library’s permanent collection. Earlier this year, the library purchased 20 of his photographs – 10 from a series titled “Broken Land” and 10 from the series “Paradise Road.”

“It’s an achievement of a lifetime, one that has been in the works for years, and one I am immensely proud of,” said Dudik, who has been teaching at W&M since 2014. “It is quite an honor for our nation’s institutions to see value in your work as a record of our collective consciousness and history.”

Dudik’s photographs have already been delivered to the library in Washington, D.C. That was no small feat because many of them are big – panoramic images taken with a large-format view camera in which the lens forms an inverted image on a ground-glass screen. The image is viewed, composed and focused before the glass screen is replaced with film to expose exactly the same composition as seen on the screen. 

“This is a massively significant accomplishment,” said Elizabeth Mead, Dudik’s colleague and a professor of art. “(Dudik) is an incredible credit to the field, and we are remarkably lucky to have him here at William & Mary.”

Dudik trains W&M students (“brilliant and curious,” he calls them) in his introductory photography course to work with the view camera, too. “And they love it,” he said. “It’s slow and meditative, and you can be very precise with your composition. It’s a really beautiful way of seeing the world; this methodology and materiality standing in remarkable contrast to our fast-paced digital lives.”  

Visions of paradise, views of war

The 20 photographs acquired by the Library of Congress are from two separate series almost opposite in subject matter. In 2013, Dudik began composing the images in “Paradise Road” during journeys across the U.S., seeking out different places named Paradise Road. Dudik set out to catalog America’s varying definition of what paradise might look like. What he found were mostly rural landscapes and the people who call that place home. 

For his “Broken Land” series, Dudik also traveled the country, this time photographing lesser-known U.S. Civil War battlefields. He deliberately created them without any of the signage or accoutrements that would identify them as places where war was waged. “I wanted to speak about the divisions in the country because (at the time he took the photographs, beginning in 2011) I felt a great division between left and right, and I wanted to consider the time period that led up to the American Civil War in comparison to our, then, current moment,” Dudik said.  

Each of these photographs is panoramic. “The point of the very large size was so you can almost feel like you are walking into the print, all in the name of making those places feel familiar, like you could be looking at one’s backyard, as opposed to something set aside as special and from another time,” Dudik said. 

The 20 photographs are available for public viewing at the Division of Prints and Photographs in the Library of Congress. Select images from both series can be viewed on Dudik’s website. Currently, he is preparing for Faculty Show 16, scheduled for the Muscarelle Museum of Art beginning Oct. 17, where his photographs will appear alongside the diverse artwork of his peers and emeriti professors through Jan. 11, 2026.