Hudson-based photographer Rebecca Conroy’s Laundromat is a study in time—both its slow, rhythmic passing and its ability to preserve memory. The image recalls the weekend laundromat visits of her childhood, where minutes stretched endlessly under fluorescent lights, punctuated by the steady thump of washers and dryers.
But Laundromat is more than a nostalgic snapshot. It’s an homage to 1980s fashion—an era when Laura Ashley dresses filled young girls’ closets—and a reflection on the cyclical nature of style. It also finds beauty in places often overlooked: the mundane, the humble, the forgotten. Shot in 2021 at a laundromat along the commercial strip of Fairview Avenue in Hudson, the image transforms an ordinary setting into something quietly cinematic.
“I’ve encountered so many visual gems along Fairview Avenue,” Conroy says. “It’s a place that seems stuck in another time, when things may have been better, or at least different. This laundromat was one of them.”
Conroy’s fascination with aesthetics started early. She studied sketching, sculpture, and painting at LaGuardia High School before earning a degree in film from Hampshire College. From there, she returned to New York and built a career in the fashion industry, specializing in home design and prop styling for Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Hunger, and Marie Claire, and she has styled for “Australia’s Next Top Model,” Sundance feature films, and national ad campaigns for Ulta Beauty and Macy’s.
Despite her extensive background in styling, Conroy’s photography remains rooted in storytelling. She gravitates toward locations with a nostalgic charge—old neon signage, mid-century strip malls, buildings with long-forgotten grandeur. Her work captures the way children see the world: full of hidden magic, where even the most ordinary places hold a sense of wonder.
“Certain places thrilled me as a child,” she says. “They left such a strong impression that I’d think about them long after we’d driven by. The sculptural details of older fonts, signage, and business facades from the ’50s through the ’80s still pull at me deeply.”
That fascination with time and memory has shaped the recent work Conroy has produced. Over the past few years, Conroy has focused her lens on girls aged 10 to 15, exploring fashion’s role in self-expression and identity.
“It’s a semi-autobiographical reflection of the outfits women wore when I was growing up,” she explains. “The combination of dressy polyesters and silks with cotton prairie dresses was a collision of styles in the late ’70s that still astounds and delights me. It felt both haphazard and intentional—like a secret language of style.”
Laundromat is one of many works featured in “Going Places,” Conroy’s solo exhibition in the Back Gallery at Basilica Hudson, the arts and performance venue housed in a 19th-century factory near Hudson waterfront. The show, which opens March 15 and continues through April 1, features Conroy’s daughter and her friends posing in surreal yet familiar locations, straddling the line between documentary realism and a staged dreamscape.
“This project was inspired by the strange emotional pull of mid-century to mid-’80s architecture and advertising sprinkled throughout the Hudson Valley,” Conroy says. “It’s also shaped by the two oldies radio stations that come in clear on my car’s radio. My kids have grown up singing along to those songs as we drive past many of the locations featured in these photos.”
There will be a closing weekend on March 29-30 including photo installation with props from the 1980s and a pop-up with fashion designer Samantha Pleet from 12-6pm on each day.
Basilica Hudson
This article appears in March 2025.
My friends and I went to the Basilica on Saturday 3/22, see this exhibit.
We were told it is not at the Basilica, but at their gallery space and it’s not open on the weekend. Would have appreciated better information in the article.