September 9 – November 18, 2022
Gallery reception: October 19, 6-8pm
fp3 Gallery
346 Congress Street, Boston
Gallery hours: 8am-8pm everyday
In conjunction with Michael Joseph’s September 21st presentation as part of the PRC Speaker Series, we are pleased to present an exhibition of his work at fp3 Gallery in Fort Point Boston. Lost and Found is a portrait series featuring youth who travel around the U.S. by hitchhiking and freight train hopping. They often go unseen and are their appearances can be misconstrued. Joseph sees them as being on a personal journey driven by wanderlust and escapism. Each traveler’s story is different, but they are bound by a sense of community and as they search for transient jobs they also discover a new family in their traveling friends. The images are photographed on public streets using natural light.
In Joseph’s own words, “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. Tattoos are often given to one another by stick and poke – a method of using a pin or needle with India ink to inscribe a memory from their travels. 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. The high of freedom however, does not come without consequence. Their lifestyle is physically risky and rampant with substance abuse.”
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, unplanned and up close to allow the viewer to explore the immediate and unseen. Michael’s project “Lost and Found” has been featured on Vice.com, CNN.com, AllAboutPhoto.com and published in magazines internationally. He has been exhibited nationally, notably at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, (New York, NY), the Aperture Gallery (New York, NY), Project Basho Gallery (Philadelphia, PA) as well as the Rayko Gallery (San Francisco, CA). He has lectured for Amy Arbus at the International Center of Photography (New York, NY) 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, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art in Indiana and private collections. He is a 2016 Photolucida Top 50 winner and 2020 Finalist, LensCulture Portrait Award Finalist and a recipient of the fellowship in photography from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.