HUDSON VALLEY
The Hudson River School was America’s first art movement. Founded in the 1830s American painters depicted the landscape of the Hudson Valley and the Catskill Mountains as a vast romantic wilderness. Coming at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the work of these artists inspired a conservation movement that has preserved this landscape for generations. As we approach the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Hudson River School, it seems a perfect moment to celebrate the legacy of this work. Remarkably, the preservation efforts inspired by these early paintings have allowed this wilderness to slowly return to the state in which these visionary painters viewed it.
For the past three years, I’ve trained my home made pinhole cameras on this legendary landscape. My intention is to celebrate the region and the work of these early painters by reintroducing this landscape to the public using these age-old cameras. The long time exposures required with the pinhole necessitates the camera lingering in the landscape, slowly taking-in the light. In that time, the wind blows, waters rush by, the earth turns. These elements are captured as blurred “ghosted” forms and reintroduce feeling to the photograph by likening them to the abstract brush strokes of a painter.
