Photographer, multi-media strategist, interactive producer, anthropologist, it’s hard to categorize Josh Cogan, especially as each facet of his work influences the other facets. Even as a photographer, it’s tough to tack a label on Josh’s work. Portraits, travel, commercial – but there’s an essential documentary core. As noted in a recent article by Dan Havlik in Imaging Resource, a digital photo newsletter, “Josh Cogan’s background in anthropology gives him a unique perspective as a photographer, and his passion for traveling around the world to document its peoples, cultures and traditions gives us a rare glimpse at humanity’s hidden stories.”

While in college, during a semester of study in Israel, Josh discovered that the camera can be, as he says, “a good excuse to bridge the gap between yourself and people you don’t know.” He took his entry-level camera with him everywhere. Josh graduated from the University of Maryland with a Master’s degree in anthropology, spent a few years experimenting with life, and then, as he says, “took to the road with a mission: to document vanishing cultures and enrich our understanding of social issues through photography and new media.” The camera became for him the essential tool for ethnography; it lets him blend his passion for travel with his anthropologist’s inquisitive mindset. More specifically, he uses it to record how and where cultures meet and merge and the changes caused by cultural interactions.

One of his recent projects was titled “Tomorrow We Disappear,” a documentary film plus still shots that cover the “magicians’ ghetto” in New Delhi. It’s a seedy neighborhood of performers, puppet masters, and various other artists in danger of eclipse. The stills, expressive and haunting, were shown during last fall’s FotoWeek at the 6th and I Synagogue downtown. Another of Josh’s own special projects – as opposed to commercial work for clients – is called “Pilgrim” and depicts religious moments across the world’s traditions.

Josh has received considerable recognition for his work. His images have been published in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers, and in Travel and Leisure magazine, among others. Recently, he received the German Marshall Fund Fellowship for his work on agribusiness in Brazil. One of his multimedia projects, “Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica,” was created with the multimedia firm BlueCadet, where Josh was an interactive producer. It won Josh an Emmy for New Approaches to Documentary. These days, Josh is in demand for his commercial work, yet he still finds time to travel extensively, keep refining his photographic expertise, and grow in depth as a human being.