Joseph Pocs is a photographer whose preferred topics are on social issues relating to the ideas of home, belonging and identity. His work aims to be a conduit of understanding between the stories of who and what he photographs and the viewer.
It is also his aim with his work to create historical documents or a body of evidence to be learned from by those in the future and show the truth of different moments.
He first started his photojournalism education in Chicago in 2007. He attended Columbia College Chicago for photography and minored in journalism. His first experience as a photojournalist was photographing a protest of the Iraq War and George W. Bush attended by 10,000 people and the arrest of a small number of protesters earlier in the day. Wanting to expand his experience and knowledge, he started following a group of professional mixed martial art fighters. Documenting the comradery and friendship he showed that the sport was not all about machismo, but provided a home, sense of family and belonging. Alongside a group of photographers brought together by Carrie Mae Weems, he documented the 2008 Presidential Election night and the election of President Barack Obama.
In 2012 he would travel to Southeast Asia and intern at the Phnom Penh Post. He would return multiple times over the years to document the forced evictions in Cambodia relating to a series of failed social and economic land concessions.
He currently lives in Cleveland, Ohio.