Keith Prue’s photograph immediately caught my attention for admittedly personal reasons. The scene, a valley split by a massive metal trestle lit only by the night sky and passenger train lights, set off nostalgic alarms in my head. As my eyes worked their way down the photo, my suspicions were confirmed: Hudson Valley.
I grew up in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, a small village situated along the west side of the Hudson River with my high school less than two miles from the trestle. Prue told me its official name, the Moodna Viaduct (named after the river crossed by the structure), but my lifetime of calling it “the trestle” still holds priority. Hudson Valley captures a moment often regulated to memory where, only a few times each night, a passenger train headed to Salisbury Mills Station will illuminate the top of the trestle, bringing motion to a still valley. Prue’s piece exemplifies the visceral memorialization of photography, showing that when you capture a photo, you preserve the intricacies of the space in which the photo was taken.
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