Check Out Joe Doherty’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Joe Doherty.

Hi Joe, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I grew up in Pacific Palisades, the 6th of 8 children. My youngest brother John was born with Downs Syndrome, and when I started to take photography seriously (when I was 14) he was a great subject. He was charming, had a mischievous sense of humor and absurdity, and lived for the moment. Over the next ten years (1973-1982) I made hundreds of photographs of him, and in retrospect they documented my growth from amateur to professional photographer. With the advent of digital photography I would occasionally dig into my negatives to revive some of these images, but it wasn’t until the COVID lockdown that I began a project to digitize all of them. I trickled them onto social media, usually with a whimsical story, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Many people encouraged me to collect them into a book, and that became more urgent when John fell ill and passed away in 2022. My friend Hall Kelley agreed to design the book (with a hint to 1970s magazine layouts), and other friends suggested a printer in Nebraska, Marathon Press. In the process of making the book I realized a few things. First, my photographs of John are evidence of collaboration between us to make these images, as opposed to snapshots or portraits (which they can also be). Second, John was raised during a time when services for people like him were rare or did not exist. If he’d been born ten years earlier my parents might have left him at the hospital. As a consequence, people like John tended to be hidden, and there was little notice or celebration of them. So these images document his personality, his place in our family, and his place in the world when it would otherwise have been unremarked. And third, it became clear to me how many of my friends and acquaintances had someone like John in their lives, either as a sibling, an aunt or uncle, or a child. These images and stories, which I thought were quirky and personal, have a more universal appeal than I could have guessed before I began The Johnny Chronicles.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Navigating life is an obstacle and a challenge.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I used to be an editorial and publicity photographer back in the 1980s. I left that for another career in the social sciences. I retired from UCLA in 2016, and for the last 15 years I’ve been almost exclusively making nature and landscape photographs. Without the pressure to meet the needs of clients, I can make work that satisfies me, which causes me to push harder. My wife and I have been happy to join a terrific community of photographers in California and around the country, and we give back by editing a magazine of photographs by Sierra Club members called Focal Points.

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I’ve been very lucky. For starters, I was born a white male in America at the tail end of the Baby Boom, probably the most privileged group of people to ever exist on planet Earth. I was also lucky to grow up in the 1960s and 70s, when there were far fewer rules and expectations for young people. Those two things combined meant that I could pursue my passion for photography without much intervention from others. On the flip side, it also meant that mentors and capital were hard to find, so I struggled creatively and in business for quite a while. I discovered in my 30s that I have a knack for answering questions using data, and I was lucky that the rise of desktop computers and the Internet made my academic career interesting and possible. Those same factors now make my photography possible, as I have creative control over my images that I only dreamed about in the days of Kodachrome.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.joedohertyphotography.com
• Other: https://www.GreatPartyPress.com