‘Lost & Found’ documents a contemporary American subculture of young travelers through raw, striking portraiture and intimate storytelling. These travelers, as they are referred to, abandon home to move around the country by hitchhiking and freight train hopping in a nomadic, transient existence outside of mainstream society. On their personal journey, driven by wanderlust, escapism, or a search for transient jobs, they find a new family in their traveling friends. The high of freedom, however, does not come without consequence.
Like graffiti on the walls of the city streets they inhabit and the trains they ride, their bodies and faces become the visual storybook of their lives. Their clothing is often a mismatch of found items. Jackets, pants and vests are self-made like a patchwork quilt, using fabric pieces of a fellow traveler’s clothing embellished by metal bottle caps, buttons, safety pins, lighter parts, syringe caps, and patches.
Joseph’s black and white portraits are made in public, on the street, using natural light. His portraits reveal the human condition. They capture courage, tenderness, and determination in his subjects that have been largely ignored and unseen.
Michael Joseph is a photographer who documents subculture through street portraiture. 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 unplanned and up close to allow the viewer to explore the immediate and unseen.
Michael’s work has been shown online on CNN, Vice, AnotherMan and PaperMag and published in international magazines, including Elle, Inked, 1814, and SHOTS. He has held solo exhibitions at Daniel Cooney Fine Art (New York, NY), in Soho Photo Gallery (New York, NY) and at the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts (Rochester, NH).
Linen hardcover with title shield 26 x 33 cm,
168 pages, 93 duplex illustrations,
English, ISBN 978-3-96900-138-7 2023
Texts: Michael Joseph, Paige Stevens
Design: Benjamin Wolbergs
CREDITS
Photographer Michael Joseph 'Lost & Found' / Kehrer Verlag