Elizabeth Bick
2026 Aurora + Herron Residency
August 10-21, 2026
2026 Aurora + Herron Resident Elizabeth Bick plans to spend her time in Indianapolis editing, printing, and refining a new archive of photographs, scans, and ephemera from her ongoing series, Carolina, which examines the construction and performance of American identity in the contemporary South.
In Carolina, Bick photographs spaces that invite groups of individuals to perform for themselves, one another, and the camera within staged and historically loaded environments. She writes of the series:
South Carolina is not only a symbol of the American South — it’s a landscape where narratives of whiteness, power, and tradition are staged and re-staged. My recent work investigates this terrain through what I call “visual fantasies”: aestheticized expressions of historical memory and performance that persist in the present. Historical tableau and contemporary reenactment culture share a belief that to embody a past event is to understand it. But these reenactments become rituals of white nostalgia, reproducing hierarchy, not history.
Women are central to these performances. They visually narrate American history while embedding problematic traditions into contemporary culture. My work focuses on historically gendered practices — antebellum costumes, plantation tours, beauty pageants, Civil War reenactments, members of Daughters of the Confederacy and the Daughters of the American Revolution, and female cadets enrolled at the Citadel Academy. These scenes are not simply nostalgic; they actively shape how the past is remembered, aestheticized, and mythologized.
By examining how history is staged through image, gesture, and costume, I hope to raise questions about who gets to perform this America — and for whom. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States, I plan to expand and deepen this work — reflecting on the identity crisis we are collectively experiencing as American citizens. Photography becomes a space for dialogue, a way to ask what it means to claim national belonging in 2026.
During her two-week residency, Bick hopes to work through hundreds of rolls of medium-format black-and-white film, raw digital files, and a growing collection of original tintypes and daguerreotypes from the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. In the Herron darkroom, she plans to produce large-scale silver gelatin prints and generate work prints to refine the project’s visual and conceptual arc. Bick writes of the residency, “This concentrated period of studio focus will allow me to consolidate significant new material before returning to teaching in the fall.”
Elizabeth Bick is a photographer and scholar who explores the intersection of photography and performance. Selected exhibitions include Fraenkel Gallery, Sotheby’s New York, the Norton Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Art, the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, the Houston Center for Photography, and the University of Texas Visual Arts Center. She has received grants and awards from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Rudin Prize, nominated by Shirin Neshat. Her work has been critically reviewed in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Financial Times, Photograph Magazine, Hyperallergic, and TIME Magazine, and she has been commissioned by Public Art Fund, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Wall Street Journal, and NY Times Magazine. She has participated in the American Academy in Rome artist and scholars residency, Ingmar Bergman Estate Artist Residency, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council workspace residency, and Santa Fe Art Institute residency. Her works are held in permanent collections at MoMA Library, Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Norton Museum of Art, and the Warehouse Art Museum. She is a professor and head of photography in the department of studio art at the College of Charleston. She holds an MFA in Photography from Yale University.
The Aurora + Herron Residency, a collaboration between Aurora PhotoCenter and Herron School of Art and Design/IU Indianapolis since 2021, offers a two-week intensive work period in the Herron darkroom facility and studios for experimentation, research, and development of new or ongoing projects. Read about former Aurora + Herron Residents and their projects: Tarrah Krajnak, Eli Craven, Priya Kambli, William Camargo, and Shawn Bush.
The Aurora + Herron Residency would not be possible without the following partnerships.
Herron School of Art + Design will supply darkroom access, basic chemistry, and onsite support during the residency. Aurora PhotoCenter thanks Herron School of Art + Design for its generous support of this residency.
The resident will stay at CAMi as part of a continuing program for visiting artists staying and working at the CAMi campus all year round. Aurora PhotoCenter thanks CAMi for its generous support of this residency.
