By Kathy McCarver

Photos by Andrew Moore

Situated in an early 20th-century former shirt factory in Kingston, photographer Andrew Moore’s studio offers a glimpse into his process, his creative spirit, and his perspective on how he sees the world. After living and working for years in New York City, the Connecticut-born, Princeton-educated Moore relocated to the Hudson Valley in 2018. 

With an independent major in photography at Princeton, he was able to study art history, philosophy, and literature. These complex, complementary subjects inform his layered, large-format photographs.

For much of his career, Moore documented places in decay and transition. He often focuse on fading architecture, with a hint that nature could soon step in and reclaim the landscape.

His photographs have consistently examined beauty in decay, and the layers of history that imbue a place with its own unique narrative. Whether photographing a deserted theater in Times Square, frozen-in-time streets of Havana, or Palace Square in St. Petersburg, he approaches his subjects with the curiosity of a detective, crafting a visual investigation of places and people.

In 1995 he produced a well-received series of images featuring 42nd Street in New York City, as the old theaters there were giving way to a more modern incarnation, with brighter lights and ’round-the-clock retail.

His first book, Inside Havana, was published in 2001, and was followed by four more monographs: Russia (2005), Detroit Disassembled (2010), Dirt Meridien (2014), and Blue Alabama (2019).

Now a resident of Dutchess County—a region where nature still forms the architecture of the landscape—his new images featuring the Hudson River Valley, the Catskill Mountains, and nearby New England have yielded photographs of sublime mystery. 

The themes of Hudson River School painting (discovery, exploration, settlement) are evident in Moore’s recent work. You see a complicated elegance, depicting the effects and results of time, and how these changes can alter a place. 

“For the first three years of the project, I focused on the overwhelming natural beauty of this area, and my attempts to re-present that beauty in a more modern context,” Moore says.

Some of these works were presented in Whiskey Point and Other Tales, a series shown at Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York City and more recently at KMR Arts gallery in Washington Depot. For the photos in that series—plus many newer images—there are plans for a  book that is expected to come out in 2025.

“After focusing on the natural beauty of the valley and the region,” Moore says, “I’ve decided to bend the narrative a little, and focus on the more intimate and even supernatural elements I’ve encountered up here. I’m shooting large, wide landscapes along with these more allusive scenes.”

Moore’s work is in public collections around the world, including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty in Los Angeles. He has produced films, including How to Draw a Bunny: A Ray Johnson Portrait, which won a Special Jury Award at Sundance in 2002. He has been honored with a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and a Pollock- Krasner Foundation grant.—andrewlmoore.com