Work On View in the Basilica Gallery Building
Nov 7 – Jan 16

Opening reception Nov 10 as part of Jupiter Nights

Reimagining the function of blueprints as used by architects, engineers, and urban planners to design the constructed landscape, Jessica Chappe and Annie Reynolds will create collaborative designs—blueprints—with Hudson-area residents’ questions and experiences. 

Through various public encounters involving portraits, conversation, and question design prompts, Hudson community members are invited to explore the question: How do the questions we ask (or don’t ask) shape the place we live in, and create a felt sense of place?

Chappe and Reynolds will create cyanotype portraits* at a later date with an assemblage of these materials and reflections (each Hudson-resident collaborator will receive a scan of their portrait later this fall). An exhibition of portraits will be held in the newly expanded Basilica Gallery from November 7 – January 16.

*The cyanotype process–a photographic method using sunlight exposure to develop prints in various blue hues–is an action of transformation, imagination, and composition created with both manufactured and natural elements. The layering of these elements reflects the overlapping individual, social, and environmental factors that make up the lived experience of– and questions inherent to–place. 

In their article Faces of a Changing Hudson, Annie Reynolds and Jessica Chappe spoke with newcomers and life-long Hudson residents, who reflected on their roles within the past, present, and future of their community affected by the mass pandemic migration to the Hudson Valley. The reporting process–and the relationships formed along the way–prompted more questions than answers. This spurred an interest in learning more about the questions that are asked and left behind in regards to the past, present, and future of one’s community and sense of place.  

Chappe and Reynolds have been trained in oral history by Oral History Summer School and approach their work with oral history values of reciprocity, anti-fixity, and open-ended questions. They share interests in co-authorship and collaborative methods, community engagement, embodied practices, and mixed-media storytelling.

Special thanks to the Hudson Area Library History Room for support with research and archival resources. 

Jessica Chappe

Jessica Chappe (Los Angeles, CA) is a documentary photographer. Her project-based work focuses on how people find belonging through community, place and the self. She believes in the power of collaboration and storytelling through using mixed media to expand our understanding of humanity and what keeps us connected. 

Chappe currently lives and works in Hudson, NY as a freelance photographer and storyteller. Chappe graduated from Bard College with a BA in photography in 2016. She was shortlisted in 2020 for the Open Competition and Alpha Female Awards in the Sony World Photography Awards. Chappe’s photo essay, Inside a 22-Person Pandemic Pod in a Hudson Valley Hotel was featured in Curbed, NY, an outlet of New York Magazine and went viral in July 2021. Chappe was hired by Times Union Hudson Valley to reflect on the man who coined the name “Witchcraft District” through interviewing and documenting the community. The piece A Look Inside Poughkeepsie’s Witchcraft District was published in October 2021. 

Annie Reynolds

Annie lives in Hudson, NY. She works in a variety of forms–from writing to interviewing to listening–to invite co-created narrative, particularly around themes of beauty, loss, and belonging; and practice new forms of attention and eros. Her work is deeply influenced by collaborative ethnographic methods, oral history ethics and praxis, and a trust in the art of listening. 

Annie currently works for Oral History Summer School, an oral history training program in Hudson, NY. She previously lived in Portland, OR where was a member of Liberation Literacy, a prison-based writing and reading group in Portland, Oregon; a facilitator with Between the Lines, where she recorded parents reading books to their children from prison; and a program manager for a trauma healing arts non-profit. She holds a BA in anthropology from Lewis & Clark College and has received certification in Sound Design and Podcast Production from Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.