Photographers

Joshua Charow (born 1998) is a highly acclaimed contemporary American documentary photographer, filmmaker, and visual archivist based in New York City. Raised as a passionate skateboarder and subculture enthusiast, Charow initially immersed himself in the dangerous world of urban exploration during his teenage years. He regularly scaled skyscrapers, climbed suspension bridges, and navigated active subway tunnels to document the hidden, off-limits structural veins of New York. This organic, raw interaction with urban environments heavily informed his distinct cinematic eye and natural humanistic instincts. He pursued formal training at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Film & Television. Over a prolific early career, Charow has established a robust practice bridging commercial digital media and long-form socio-cultural visual preservation, directing and shooting documentary content for elite global publications including The New York Times, TIME Magazine, The New Yorker, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu.

Charow achieved international critical and institutional acclaim with his monumental fine-art photography project and debut monograph, Loft Law: The Last of New York City’s Original Artist Lofts (published by Damiani Books). Spanning over two years of intensive investigative research, portrait photography, and video documentation, Charow utilized the historic 1982 New York Loft Law to locate, gain access to, and catalog the lives of over fifty veteran artists illegally squatting in industrial manufacturing buildings since the 1960s and 70s. His photographs capture these dwindling live-work sanctuaries, serving as a poignant psychological and socio-spatial critique on rapid gentrification, real estate inflation, and the vanishing bohemian core of downtown Manhattan. Following the massive success of his exhibition at Westwood Gallery in SoHo, Charow expanded his long-term visual archiving of artistic diaspora subcultures, culminating in his highly anticipated follow-up monograph, Artist in Residence. Released through major publishers, the project profiles elite multi-generational creatives maintaining historic, vulnerable workspaces against the shifting realities of modern cities.

Operating at the cutting edge of digital visual storytelling, Charow leverages social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube to broadcast micro-documentaries that humanize complex urban policy, attracting over half a million global subscribers and generating hundreds of millions of views. Within the cinema industry, his technical versatility shines as a Director of Photography; his debut feature documentary, Untrapped: The Story of Lil Baby, premiered as an official selection at the prestigious Tribeca International Film Festival. He has also directed high-profile music and cultural retrospectives, including the definitive living American songwriters series for The New York Times Magazine featuring icons Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, and Mariah Carey. Charow remains a vital voice in 21st-century humanistic lens-based media, ensuring that the ephemeral subcultures and vulnerable historic spaces of New York City are permanently preserved for future generations.