For more than half a century, photographer Joseph Squillante has followed a single subject: the Hudson River.
Not one place along it, not one season, not one fleeting moment of light—but the whole river. From the Adirondacks, where the Hudson begins as a trickle at Lake Tear of the Clouds, to the harbor where it widens and merges with the Atlantic, Squillante has walked its banks, camera in hand, photographing its landscapes, communities, wildlife, and environmental struggles. The result is one of the most sustained photographic studies of a single American river ever made.
This month, that body of work is being recognized when Squillante receives the ArtsWestchester Award on March 13 at its annual luncheon at the Brae Burn Country Club in Purchase. The honor follows his landmark retrospective exhibition, “Lens on the Hudson,” at the Hudson River Museum, which surveyed five decades of his photographs documenting every mile of the river.
For Squillante, who lives in Peekskill, the recognition marks a moment of reflection on a life spent pursuing a single visual and environmental mission. “I’m in an amazing period in my life,” he says. “Last year was the 50th anniversary of my photographing the Hudson, and now this Arts Award. Perseverance pays off.”
A Life Turned by a Camera
Squillante did not set out to become a photographer of rivers—or even a photographer at all.
After graduating from college, he began working at Chase Manhattan Bank on a management track. The job offered stability and advancement, but the routine quickly began to chafe. The turning point came unexpectedly when a coworker asked him to photograph a wedding.
Squillante had recently bought a Pentax camera and was still learning how to use it. He hesitated—weddings are once-in-a-lifetime events—but agreed.
Backing down the aisle with a flash unit in hand, something clicked. “The pictures worked out great,” he recalls. “And I realized this is what I want to do. I’m making money doing something I love.”
Shortly afterward, he quit the bank. The decision crystallized one morning as he stepped off the train at Grand Central Terminal. “I had this realization: 50 weeks for the bank and two weeks for Joe. It just didn’t add up.”
He began studying photography seriously, taking courses at the School of Visual Arts and the New School. Among his most influential teachers was the celebrated Life magazine photographer Philippe Halsman, whose course in psychological portraiture exposed Squillante to the expressive power of light and human presence. He also studied darkroom printing with renowned landscape photographer George Tice, who helped refine the technical precision that would become a hallmark of his work.
Discovering the Hudson
Squillante first began photographing the Hudson River in 1975. What initially drew him was the sheer visual power of the landscape. When he began developing prints in the darkroom, he realized the river offered an inexhaustible subject. “The Hudson River is a fantastic subject,” he says. “It keeps yielding different kinds of experiences.”
His early photographs echoed the sensibility of the 19th-century Hudson River School painters—artists such as Thomas Cole and Frederic Church who depicted the region’s landscapes as sublime and spiritually charged. Over time, critics and curators began comparing Squillante’s work to that tradition, describing his photographs as a contemporary continuation of the Hudson River School.
But the context in which he works is very different. The painters of the 1800s depicted a largely untamed landscape. Squillante’s Hudson is a post-industrial river, shaped by factories, urban development, environmental damage, and decades of restoration efforts.
Still, the beauty remains. “I still see the beauty everywhere,” he says. “It’s a matter of how you see.”
The River as Community
Decades of walking the river’s edge have given Squillante a perspective few people share. He has photographed dredging operations tied to industrial pollution, wildlife restoration programs, fish sampling projects, and the return of bald eagles to the Hudson Valley. He has worked with environmental organizations including Riverkeeper, Scenic Hudson, and Clearwater, documenting both the threats facing the river and the efforts to protect it.
For years, he thought of those assignments as side projects alongside his artistic work. Only recently, while assembling photographs for the Hudson River Museum exhibition, did he fully recognize the environmental dimension of his archive.
Curator Laura Vookles encouraged him to include images focused on conservation and ecological recovery rather than simply the river’s scenic beauty. “I had to dig deep into my archive,” he says. “Fifty years of photographs.”
The process changed his understanding of his own work. “I realized I can’t only follow my feelings and make beautiful pictures,” he says. “I have to be more active. The photographs have to work to protect the river.”
Through the years, he has witnessed a growing community devoted to the Hudson’s health—from scientists studying fish populations to activists campaigning against pollution. “There’s so much that goes on in the Hudson River that most people have no idea about,” he says.
The Power of Place
Squillante’s home base in Peekskill places him at one of his favorite vantage points along the river. Just a mile from his house lies Riverfront Green, where the Hudson narrows and bends between the mountains of the Hudson Highlands. “I call it one of the three most magnificent vistas on the river,” he says.
The site is endlessly variable. Fog, storms, dawn light, winter ice, and summer haze transform the same stretch of water hour by hour. “Photography is all about light,” Squillante says. “You can go down there one hour and come back the next, and it’s completely different.”
Photo: Joseph Squillante
Two other locations remain especially meaningful to him: Tivoli, where he first began photographing the river in the 1970s, and the Hudson’s remote source in the Adirondacks near Mount Marcy.
Together they mark the river’s full journey—from mountain spring to tidal estuary.
A Lifetime Still Unfinished
After fifty years of photographing the Hudson, Squillante insists he is far from finished. “There are things I still haven’t photographed,” he says. “Certain stretches of the river, places up in Washington County, the Troy Dam. I need two or three lifetimes.”
He continues to photograph wildlife research, restoration projects, and historical sites tied to the Hudson River School painters. He also teaches workshops through the Hudson River School of Photography, encouraging students to see the river—and photography itself—with greater awareness.
At a time when nearly everyone carries a camera in their pocket, Squillante believes the craft of photography still demands patience and sensitivity. “It’s about light,” he says. “The play of light on the subject.”
But the deeper motivation remains the river itself. “My mission is to raise awareness of the beauty of the Hudson,” he says. “Because when people see how beautiful it is, they realize how fragile it is—and how much it deserves to be protected.”
For Squillante, the recognition from ArtsWestchester is gratifying. Yet he insists the honor belongs not only to him but to the subject he has pursued for more than half a century. “It’s really not about Joe,” he says. “It’s about photography—and the river.”
