The world traveler David Burnett was back home in the Hudson Valley when his wife’s cousin challenged him to an assignment. “She threw an elbow at me,” Mr. Burnett recalled. “ ‘Sure, you go off to France, Spain and Vienna. But what about Newburgh?’ ”

Hard to argue with that.

Mr. Burnett, an award-winning photojournalist for more than four decades, and his wife had moved to Newburgh, N.Y., almost five years ago, settling into a city about halfway between New York and Albany that a century ago was a booming home to industry. Rich in history and architecture, in recent decades it was known more for its urban ills from drug dealing, violence, crumbling homes and poverty. But Mr. Burnett knew there was a lot more to be found.

“It would be very easy to portray them in one brush stroke in something they can never be rid of,” Mr. Burnett said. “There are still some tough parts of town. But there is a feeling something is going on here, and it’s not just a bunch of artists from Brooklyn. Part of the energy is from inside. You feel the town is turning some sort of corner. It’s always hard to be specific, but there is a feeling things are reviving.”

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It’s the kind of feeling that runs through other projects Mr. Burnett had done with Photographers for Hope, a group he started with Anna Wang, a Geneva-based consultant and photographer. He had done innovative projects with them in Bangladesh and Brazil, among other places, but never one close to home.

Granted, not too many of the group’s members had even heard of Newburgh.

“I’m used to projects that are a little more exotic,” Ms. Wang said. “When David first proposed it, I did some research and thought that it looked a little rough. I’ve been in rough places and spent a couple of years in Johannesburg. That attracted me, the roughness of it. But it had more depth. By the second day I was there, I kind of fell in love with the place. It was so different from anywhere I had ever been.”

With help from the Kaplan Family Foundation, Mr. Burnett was able to fly in and house the group’s far-flung members. He was also able to hire a friend of his family who could keep the project on course as the photographers spread out through the city.

Mr. Burnett started with a few places and people he thought the group might like to meet, coming up with a list that included high school football games, a church and a social service agency. But those were starting points, as the photographers fanned out into the community. There they came across wide avenues, Victorian homes and landmarks like the Dutch Reformed Church. It was, they learned, a city of contrasts as well as hidden charms.

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“Everybody we met along the way was helpful about suggesting other things,” Mr. Burnett said. “Like the grade school ballet classes (photo above). If you drove around they city, you wouldn’t know that existed. But when you get connected, all these things pop up on the radar.”

The temptation might be to cast the city in the light of its storied past, but the photographers found themselves entranced by more recent changes, like the growth in the area’s Mexican population, which turned out in force for a rodeo on the grounds of the armory.

While other photographers fell in love with doing street scenes, Ms. Wang zeroed in on the creative types. “I make Power Point presentations,” she joked. “That’s about the extent of my making things.”

Among the people she met was a man with an impressive workplace: Mike the Builder. He told her he could make anything, like airplanes (photo below).

“Oh, you make models? Show me,” she said to him. “He told me: ‘I cant! It’s in an airfield.’ He made real airplanes, dune buggies, anything you could think of. He made every piece of machinery in his studio.”

Was there anything he could not make, she asked.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Money.”

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Mr. Burnett feels good about what he and his colleagues have accomplished, and he intends to continue adding images to the project. The work, which has already been shown locally, will be featured in a new show at Newburgh’s Ann Street Gallery, opening Dec 12.

“You never feel like you completely covered a place, but I feel we did a lot of things along the way,” he said. “There is a feeling there are always going to be setbacks, that’s part of the game. But it keeps moving forward. There is a feeling of progress.”

The Photographers for Hope exhibit, “Newburgh Revival,” will be on display at the Safe Harbors Ann Street Gallery in Newburgh, N.Y., opening on Dec. 12. You can follow Photographers for Hope on Facebook.

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