Joe Atlas

As a professional photographer, my work for over 40 years has focused primarily on food, portrait, and still life images regularly used by major brands for advertising, corporate, and editorial projects. Simultaneously, I have been developing a body of personal work that reflects my wonder and passion for the natural world and our spiritual connection to it. I create still life photographs using natural history specimens, inspired by the incredible record of diversity stored in the cabinets and backrooms of museum collections. My work blends reverential lighting with conceptual visual storytelling in an effort to abstract and reveal the beauty and wonder hidden in our natural world

My photographic journey started when my father bought me my first camera, I was 14. Not long after, we built a darkroom in the basement of my Philadelphia childhood home. Soon I was developing B&W film and making prints. It didn’t take long before I was spending all my time making images. I was hooked. While still in high school, inspired by Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson’s iconic photos in Life Magazine, combined with an early interest in natural history and scientific images, I accepted an internship at the University of Pennsylvania scientific imaging lab that opened my eyes and set me on my path. I later went on to study photography formally at the University of Arizona and Tucson’s Center for Creative Photography, a year after it was co-founded by Ansel Adams, where I studied under and worked closely with famed photographers W. Eugene Smith and Harold Jones. I continued my education, and went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brooks Institute of Photography.

BIG BONES | A PHOTO EXHIBITION
MorYork Gallery , Los Angeles California , USA
March 2026, solo show

Project Statement

Inspired by the histories of “Wonder Rooms” curated by 16th-century explorers, this series of images is part of an ongoing study of natural history collections and specimens.
Hidden in plain sight with no identifying signage, among meatpackers and wholesalers of market produce and cheap imported goods, 15 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, sits one of the world’s largest collections of marine mammal remains. It’s the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s Large Mammal depository; the oversized warehouse primarily is filled with cetaceans, including whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Millions of people must have visited the museum, yet few know that this treasure trove of specimens is hidden away in an anonymous warehouse in an industrial district. Closed to the public and only rarely visited by research scientists, it has been managed by a solitary caretaker for 40-some years, tasked with the responsibility to prepare specimens for research and catalogue and manage their scientific worth.

On the surface this warehouse can appear quite menacing, but something resonated deeply when I came face-to-face with...