100-Mile Home

I'm a photographer and writer living in the oft-overlooked mid-Hudson region of New York. Albany, Troy, and Cohoes, while pretty rough around the edges, are some of America's earliest river towns.

This region was among the first settled by Europeans. It's also (I think) a world-class landscape because it's located between the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains and beside the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers. 

Rivers and mountains attract life and I've found there are a lot of places where our human and natural stories converge, from the Hudson's high and low tides, to canals and transportation history, through its pine barrens and post-industrial boom towns, all shaped by Indigenous, Dutch, and English influences. Not all of it's easy history, but it is complex, which makes it fascinating to me.

I've wandered my 100-mile home for close to a decade, from Cohoes to Hudson, and am drawn to the jittery energy where the natural world and the stuff of our human story collide and coexist.

In April 2021, SUNY Press  published my book, 100-Mile Home: A Story Map of Albany, Troy, & the Hudson River. It's a creative discovery of some of the region's human and natural stories, and I also face the types of questions that arise when interrogating home.

Last, I think story maps are a wonderful thing. They enable one to go as creatively into a geographical region as one likes, gathering up history, terrain, people, landmarks, and emotion. There is freedom to experience and blend all sorts of events and perspectives and visuals. I think story maps are a great way to use word and image to reflect uniquely American perspectives. 
SP

Images available for sale at Clement Frame in Troy!