The press thunders to life at Southern Dutchess News in Poughkeepsie. Metal plates—straight out of the 1950s—lock into place. Ink rolls. Paper feeds in long, unspooling sheets. Ryan Kraus stands to the side, watching as his photographs become something readers can fold under their arm.
Kraus, the founder of New Paltz Photo Works (NPPW), a photography newspaper launched in 2023, had emailed the press asking to observe a run. What he found was care. “Every inch of the paper is hand-checked by the pressmen,” he says.
NPPW began as a simple idea after graduating from New Paltz High School, where he spent nearly all his time in the darkroom. He felt “the absence of physical media.” Then, while studying at Dutchess Community College from 2022 to 2024, a journalism class discussion about the decline of newspapers sparked an interest in sharing printed photography. Online posting is constant, he says. Print “demands thoughtfulness.”
The first issue of NPPW, published in November 2023, came together in two weeks: eight pages and 300 copies featuring work by friends Matan Ziv, Bryce Casamento, Tom Dunphy, and Joaquin Broughton. “It looked very different from what the paper has become today,” Kraus says. Learning layout and design along the way, he has refined the publication with each issue. What began as an experiment has grown into a quarterly featuring photographers across the region.
Collaboration sits at the center of the project. Kraus sends weekly emails to artists, asking to meet for coffee and inviting them into the paper. “If I were to give advice to younger artists, it would be to reach out and build relationships with as many inspiring people as you can,” he says.
That impulse has expanded beyond the paper. Rule of Thirds, a studio and gallery space in New Paltz that Kraus co-owns with Allison O’Connor and Seth Jones, hosts free, monthly photo clubs, exhibitions, workshops, and artist talks.
Kraus also rejects the familiar narrative of the “starving artist.” NPPW operates as a for-profit business, with all income from advertisements and sliding-scale artist pages reinvested into printing, boxes, shipping, and legal fees. He supports himself with a day job as a martial arts instructor at Fighting Spirit Karate in Gardiner while finishing his final semester at SUNY New Paltz.
Copies of the paper are free in newspaper boxes throughout the Hudson Valley, with optional $15 mailed subscriptions. “There shouldn’t be a financial barrier for the community to engage with my work and the work of my peers,” he says. Providing art for free “inspires in ways that cannot be measured by price.”
Producing NPPW has become the engine behind Kraus’s photography, pushing him to document his everyday life and feel more present. Recently, he’s been reflecting on photographs he took on family trips between the ages of 9 and 13. “Some of my best work was created when I was a child,” he says. “There is an honesty and instinct in those photographs that feels pure.”
This article appears in April 2026.
