Mission

LightField Arts aims to use the power of visual art to illuminate environmental and social issues.

LightField is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

EXHIBIT

LightField Arts mounts a biannual exhibit of multimedia visual art that showcases the work of innovative and distinguished photographers and multimedia artists through exhibitions, moderated talks, and educational outreach.

LightField’s exhibit establishes a space for the vibrant and very active photography and film community in the northeast U.S. It is designed to create ongoing context for its exhibited art, and to stimulate lively dialogue with the public.

YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHERS WORKSHOP

LightField Arts organizes a free, multi-day photography workshop for teens from underserved areas of Hudson that centers on camera basics, alternative processes, visual literacy, and writing.

Designed and led by artist and teacher Saskia Kahn, our curriculum is tailored to fit the theme of each year’s festival. Students’ work is shown at LightField, where their friends and family join us to celebrate opening night, and other programming throughout the festival.

History

LightField grew out of an ongoing project, The Half King Photography Series, sponsored by a fabled bar and restaurant in NYC’s Chelsea neighborhood. Starting in 2010, Curator Anna Van Lenten built a large and lively audience for the Series' opening night events, where audience participation consistently enriched the dialogue between moderators and the excellent photographers whose work was being shown. The series ended in January, 2019 when The Half King closed. 

The inaugural LightField Festival ran in 2016 at the Hudson Opera House in Hudson, NY. Titled “Making a Scene: Storytelling and the Real,” it addressed the increasing slippage in narrative art between documentary and fiction. The 2016 Festival also launched the Young Photographers Workshop.

The LightField Arts 2017 Festival was titled “Just the Facts.” It took place at Hudson Hall (formerly the Hudson Opera House) in Hudson, NY. The works on exhibit took on themes of desire, belonging, home, history, and individual agency. Altogether, they offered an imaginative response to how people of varying means live within and apart from the forces of globalization, technology, and immigration. The Young Photographers Workshop expanded to three days.

For 2018, LightField Arts scaled down its programming in order to prepare for 2019. It ran the Young Photographers Workshop, and participated in Travelogue, the annual spring party of The School, Jack Shainman's gallery in Kinderhook, NY.

LightField’s 2019 show, Photo + Synthesis, ran October 12 - December 21, 2019. The art on display referenced the ecology, history, and landscape of the Hudson River Valley. It included new commissions of landscape photography, Asher B. Durand oil paintings, and a special data visualization piece about tree ring science.