"The Way Home"

“The Way Home” is a series of landscape photographs chronicling the history of the Hudson River and its river towns. The Hudson, named “Muh-he-kumne-tuk”, or “the river that flows both ways” by Native Americans, has sustained life for millennia. However, we often overlook the civilizations and ecosystems that thrived there before European colonization. These photographs, created using historical techniques, evoke the feeling of life along the river before Dutch settlement, while simultaneously addressing current issues—from rising water levels and pollution to abandoned buildings being destroyed. I intend for these photographs to inspire an appreciation for the river and to provoke a sense of responsibility to protect it. The photographs were captured using my smartphone during train commutes along the Hudson. Then, I transformed those images into ambrotypes—positive glass prints created using the wet plate collodion process. By beginning with digital photography and then transitioning to alternative processes, I bridge the gap between the modern and the historical, transforming captured moments from static reality into dynamic expressions of movement and the passage of time. Thi