Pasquale J. Cuomo’s path into photography begins in a familiar, honest way: a teenager picks up a camera, thinking it’s just something to try, and discovers it’s something that stays. Born in the United States, Cuomo has spent more than five decades working with the medium as it kept changing around him. He lived through the film years and the darkroom hours, then moved into the digital era without abandoning what the earlier process taught him. That long timeline shows in his images. They carry the imprint of practice—years of experimenting, adjusting, getting it wrong, getting it closer, and returning again with sharper instincts. For Cuomo, photography doesn’t read like a hobby he outgrew. It reads like a companion he never stopped listening to: step outside, notice the world, and translate what you see into a frame.
There’s a steady quiet in Cuomo’s work that comes from commitment rather than posing. He isn’t chasing tricks. He’s chasing the right vantage point, the right moment, and the kind of light that makes a scene feel honest. In his newer Hudson River Valley series, that approach becomes the point. The landscapes and structures share space without fighting for attention. Instead of trying to impress, these photographs invite a slower look. They ask you to stay with them long enough to feel what the place feels like.
The two images here—one made at Croton Reservoir Park and the other at Clermont State Historic Site—read like companion pieces. Not because they mirror each other visually, but because they share the same priorities: breathing room, clear structure, and a sense of place that isn’t being pushed. Cuomo lets the valley set the tone. He doesn’t crowd the scene with drama. He gives it space to speak.
In the Croton Reservoir Park photograph, the sky plays a starring role. Cuomo gives it a wide, open stretch of the frame, filled with soft clouds that keep the blue from turning flat. The airiness becomes part of the mood. Below, the trees are caught in late-season shift: some still holding warm color, others already stripped back. That mix feels true to fall in the Hudson River Valley—never perfectly uniform, always in transition. It’s the season showing its seams.
The composition feels easy, but it’s clearly considered. Trees on either side create a natural framing effect, gently steering your eye toward the distance where water and land meet. Depth builds in calm layers: shaded foreground, midground branches, then the far horizon. Nothing is forced. The light is bright but not sharp, and the image has a clarity that feels found, not manufactured. It’s the kind of photograph that suggests the artist arrived, looked around, waited, and chose the moment when everything settled into place.
The Clermont State Historic Site image shifts gears. Here the subject isn’t open sky alone, but structure—weight, arc, and the presence of built history. Cuomo frames a large bridge sweeping across the scene, cutting through the pale blue sky while autumn trees rise behind it. Below, the view drops into rock, water, and stonework, a stack of textures that could easily become overwhelming. But he keeps the image readable. The bridge becomes the organizing line, the clear gesture that holds everything together.
What stands out is the balance between human-made form and the landscape around it. The bridge doesn’t feel like an intrusion. It feels like part of the valley’s vocabulary, something that belongs to the place now. On the right, stepped stonework carries water down in a repeating pattern, echoing the bridge’s rhythm of arches. At the base, dark rocks keep the scene grounded so it doesn’t drift into simple prettiness. Water moves through the frame, but it doesn’t steal the whole show. It’s there as a reminder: the valley is always changing, even when the stone and steel look permanent.
Seen together, these two photographs hint at what Cuomo is building in this new series: a way of describing place through mood. One image leans into openness, air, and seasonal change. The other leans into scale, engineering, and the way people shape the landscape over time. Both stay rooted in direct seeing. They don’t rely on heavy processing or spectacle. They rely on fundamentals—light, composition, and patience.
Cuomo’s long career matters here because you can sense the restraint that experience tends to bring. After fifty-plus years, the goal often shifts. It stops being about proving you can capture something and becomes more about choosing what’s worth capturing in the first place. These photographs feel like they come from that point of view. They’re unhurried, spacious, and precise—two quiet statements from an artist who still finds real satisfaction in framing the world and saying, in his own way, “Stay here a moment. Look again.”
