Michael Joseph is a street portrait and documentary photographer. Raised just outside of New York City, his inspirations are drawn from interactions with strangers on city streets and aims to afford his audience the same experience through his photographs. His portraits are made on the street, often unplanned and up close to allow the viewer to explore the immediate and unseen. Themes throughout his portraiture and projects include identity formation, found family, wanderlust, the human journey, the search for equality and human authenticity. His first monograph, "Lost and Found: A Portrait of American Wanderlust", was published Fall, 2023 (Europe) and will be coming out Spring, 2024 (USA) by Kehrer Verlag.
Michael’s work has been featured on CNN.com, Vice.com, AnotherMan.com, PaperMag.com, the Advocate, and published in magazines internationally including Elle, Inked, 1814 and SHOTS. He has been exhibited nationally, with solo shows at Daniel Cooney Fine Art (New York, NY) and the Soho Photo Gallery (New York, NY) and the FP3 Gallery (Boston, MA). Group exhibitions include the notable Aperture Gallery (New York, NY), the Getty Images Gallery (London, UK) and the Griffin Museum of Photography (Massachusetts). Notable museum exhibitions include “The History of Photography – Selections from the Museum’s Collection” at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and “Where Words Falter - Art and Empathy” at the Tang Teaching Museum of Fine Arts, a solon style exhibit where Michael’s work was in the company of Mary Ellen Mark, Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and others. He has lectured at the International Center of Photography (New York, NY), the Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, GA), in portraiture classes at the New England School of Photography (Boston, MA) and taught at the Light Factory (Charlotte, NC).
His portraits are held in the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, TX) Fort Wayne Museum of Art (Fort Wayne, Indiana), the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts (Rochester, NH), the Jack Sheer Collection, Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery (Saratoga Springs, NY) and private collections. He is a 2023 and 2016 Photolucida Top 50 Photographer, 2020 Photolucida Finalist, and LensCulture Portrait Award Finalist. Michael was named “One of the Top 25 LGBTQ+ Film Photographers You Need to Know” by Analogue Forever magazine in 2021. He is a recipient of the fellowship in photography from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a grant from the Peter S. Reed Foundation.