A silhouette of hills, dark, distant, and motionless, embraces the pulsing sun that, in Joseph Squillante’s photograph, warms the waters of the Hudson River, a tributary that has been the focus of the photographer and artist’s work for five decades. A gallery of the Hudson’s changing landscape will be presented on Tuesday, September 9, at the Peekskill Yacht Club. The event, which begins at 7 p.m, is open to the public and free of charge.

The initiative, organized by the Garden Club of Peekskill and the Peekskill Yacht Club, aims to highlight the beauty captured through Squillante’s lens. The artist, a native of the Bronx, began photographing the Hudson while helping a friend move into a home in Tivoli. With every click on his Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic camera, he became increasingly intrigued with the Hudson River landscape, and eventually the towns along the river and the people who had settled there. 

That fascination with the landscape became the foundation of his career and, later, led him to found—together with his wife Carol Capobianco—the Hudson River School of Photography in Peekskill, where they currently reside. Squillante has said that his mission is to “raise awareness of the beauty of the Hudson River through photography,” a goal that informs both his artistic and educational work.

Squillante’s work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Albany Institute of History and Art, the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, and the Katonah Museum of Art. Several of his photographs are part of permanent collections at the New-York Historical Society, the Museum of the City of New York, the Albany Institute, and the Hudson River Museum.

Currently, the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers is presenting “Lens on the Hudson: Photographs by Joseph Squillante,” an exhibition that celebrates 50 years of his work. The exhibit will be on view until January 4, 2026. Many of the images in the museum will also be shown during the September 9 presentation. Squillante will explain the story behind each photograph and the historical and ecological aspects they reflect.

For the Garden Club, the program represents an opportunity to connect Peekskill residents with the work of a local artist who has documented the Hudson River’s evolution for half a century. The presentation will take place as the sun sets over the river, visible from the waterfront location of the Peekskill Yacht Club. In this way, attendees can capture in their memory the Hudson’s beauty, just as Squillante does in his photographs.