Artist Caleb Stein, Vassar Class of 2017, returns to Poughkeepsie to discuss his ongoing photographic engagement with the local landscape. Several photographs from his 2020 series, Down by the Hudson, featuring scenes from local watering holes, are on view at the Loeb this summer in Great Green Hope for the Urban Blues and Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Black Space-Making from Harlem to the Hudson Valley.

Stein (b. 1994, UK) is a multimedia artist currently based in the U.S. His conceptual, documentary work often takes the form of photographic installations, multi-channel video works, and artist books that engage with questions around the collective, community, and the relationship between photography, perception, and memory. Stein’s work has been exhibited internationally, often as an artist duo with Andrea Orejarena (b. 1994, Colombia). His work can be found in a number of public & private collections, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. As an artist duo, Orejarena & Stein are the recipients of the 2024 FOAM Talent Award and the 2024 Center for Photographic Art Artist Grant. Stein’s work has been published in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, The British Journal of Photography, The Guardian, Vogue Italia, and Vanity Fair, among many other places. His publications include How to Move a Mountain (Luhz Press, 2024), Long Time No See (Jiazazhi Press, 2022), and American Glitch (Gnomic Book, 2024), both made as an artist duo with Andrea Orejarena.