Chelsea Hudson - Storyographer

08/11/2023

I just found out my series, The Cost and Face of Resistance, was a finalist in the “conflict” series and won an Honorable Mention award at the annual IPA (International Photograph Awards) competition.

I submitted this series on Michèle, a survivor of Ravensbrück concentration camp and teenage member of the French Resistance in WWII. She welcomed us into her home in Paris in 2018 and shared her story. One of the most moving things, for me, was the 3-ring binder she kept with memorabilia from the families of the men she and her family helped save…. The men who cost her her whole family. Her mother, father and brother were killed in various camps when they were betrayed in Paris. She survived. This binder is her “why.”

I am very honored and proud that this series was one of the finalists in the I think it is imperative to count the cost and understand what is worth fighting for, dying for and sacrificing for. I will never cease to be inspired by the women we met while filming for and their fierce courage and resilience.

Thank you for sharing Michèle’s images and story and granting me this award.

Please click through the link in my bio to see all of the images in the series.

04/26/2023

Super excited for this little photo exhibit at Longmont Books on Friday evening.

If you are local to the Northern Colorado area, love warm, cozy bookstores and books and appreciate wanderlusty travel photography… this is the place for you.

is a new gem at 624 Main Street, regularly hosts poetry nights (Saturday the 29th), local artists (hi! 👋), local author readings and more.

Hope to see you there!

04/23/2023

Join me in Longmont, CO for a small photo exhibit at on Friday, April 28 at 7pm. 624 Main St.

I will have a variety of large pieces, notecard sets, wood prints, matted prints and other unique photo gifts for sale.

**hint hint… great Mother’s Day gift options!**

Come check it out, grab some books and then have dinner on Main Street this Friday.

Cheers!

03/30/2023

“Subject”… a documentary about the ethical jungle of the making of documentaries and specifically the relationship between the filmmaker (and producers, cinematographers, editors and distributors) and the subjects of their stories.

Every documentary filmmaker, documentary photographer, humanitarian storyteller needs to watch this film.

My mind is spinning this morning thinking of the questions and conundrums this film addressed. Issues of active, ongoing consent, involving subjects of these films in a more active and participatory way, issues of payment (all experts in the film disagreed over this… there is no formula or consensus but the conversation is vital), the ethics of storytelling (whose story, whose voice, power dynamics, authenticity, transparency, etc).

I wish I could sit down with the handful of documentarian storytellers and chat around a pitcher of beer about all of this.

Props to and for their work on this really important film. And thanks to the for choosing this as the opening film. A fabulous resource with which we can evaluate and consider the stories we craft, curate, create and consume.

01/27/2023

These are the books that have most informed my journey in learning about the Holocaust. A couple of them are great to read with younger children (Refugee, Number the Stars… I would add The Book Thief as well). The Choice by .editheger is perhaps one of the best ones I have ever read. If you want to read a fictionalized tale of one of the women I previously posted about, The Girl in the Blue Beret is about Michèle. Lilac Girls by is about the real Rabbits of Ravensbrück and what the documentary is based on. Both the memoirs and the fiction stories are illuminating and educational. We simply can’t read enough of them.

01/27/2023

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It’s not a happy day. It’s a sobering day. It’s a day of reckoning. Today we remember those who survived, those who fought, those who died. All brave. All underserving of the horrors and evil of the Holocaust.

If you have never met a survivor, a first hand witness (and they are quickly disappearing from our midst), please, please read their stories. Find their surviving loved ones who can share their stories and educate you. Please, for the sake of all humanity, educate yourself. These witnesses are almost all gone. The tangibility of this horrific eta of history is moving father of of reach, out of the realm of our understanding. The rhetoric and verbiage and politics that led to the Holocaust is alive and well and flourishing in a greater number of places in the world than any of us really knows. No, not extermination camps and gas chambers, but words… words and beliefs that enable the creation, eventually, of such horrors.

We must remember. We must tell the truth. We must speak truth to power and challenge the rhetoric of hatred and othering and dehumanization. Look at these faces. They represent the survivors who escaped with their lives but lost everything to do so… their families, loved ones, friends, homes, identities and even names.

We can’t forget. Ever. As these witnesses fade from our midst it’s imperative that we all carry their stories on… no matter our race, religion or ethnicity.

Know their names- Continued in comments ⬇️

11/27/2022

10/02/2022

Scenes from the West Highland Way.

10/02/2022

Views from the West Highland Way.

10/02/2022

Scotland’s moss game is strong. The forest floors, moss covered trees, moss covered rocks and fences, mossy forest floors. The shades of green are endless. This is absolutely the stuff of fairy tales.