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Joe is a street and landscape photographer based in Deal in Kent. Joe has been shooting street for 20 + years in London and favourite cities in Europe, the US and further afield. He branched into landscapes and seascapes after moving to the coast. He creates candid and sometimes dream-like images of the people and places he encounters on his travels.
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Childhood
Joe was made in Liverpool, one of four children to Rosario (a teen bride of Italian heritage) and Joe senior (former ted, boxer, Royal Engineers and heating engineer).

Joe junior started school at St Benet's in Netherton, an innocent, working-class, catholic boy. After passing the entrance exam to a posh school in Crosby ('one swallow doesn't make a summer' said St Benet's head) he was squidged out the other end a confused, middle-class, lapsed-catholic adolescent.

Joe left for London at 18, lured by weekly trawls of the New Musical Express. He went to college, left in the first term, fell in love with a girl out of his league (a habit he has yet to kick) and never went home.
Early career

Joe embarked on a tech career while playing in indie bands (5 O'Clock Club, The Ringing, Ugly as Sin). He picked up on sound engineering at gigs and early desktop publishing tech from freelance writing jobs.

A temp job at an architects practice in Camden evolved into an IT Director role (babies to feed) developing office networks and CAD/CAM systems and designing brochures and books. Side note: practice leader was Royal Academician Ted Cullinan and Joe had two pieces of work shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in this period ('one swallow').

When the internet happened Joe jumped ship to start a web agency. His first website was for Sadlers Wells Theatre, followed by sites for revered indie labels 4AD, Beggars Banquet and XL Recordings. Early sites were hand-coded in HTML and designed in Photoshop, which remains on his laptop to this day.

 

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The Spark
Joe's passion for photography was sparked by travel. He picked up a basic 'point-and-shoot' for a road trip to California in 2006 and was captivated. On subsequent trips a camera was as essential as a passport.

After California came visits to New York State, Southern Europe, Thailand and Japan, pushing the photography envelope each trip. The 'point-and-shoots' were traded in for SLRs and primes for trips to Marrakech, Cuba and Madagascar.
Punk photography

Joe was a teenage punk and brings some of that attitude to his photography.  He is self taught and has a DIY aesthetic, entering scenes on spec to make images with whatever is at hand (natural light and no props). Everyday people are the heroes of his street work. Always shot candid with respect but without permission. 

London street
joe in france
Inspiration

Joe draws inspiration from classic street and documentary photographers - Brassai, Cartier-Bresson, Bill Brandt, Gary Winogrand, Vivien Maier, Diane Arbus and Martin Parr - and from masters of landscape like Ansel Adams and Sebastião Salgado.

His own work mixes candid street with atmospheric landscapes and dreamscapes. Road trips have become a core part of the practice recently, using Leicas and an old Honda. Early morning beach walks have also become a habit since moving to Deal (from where you can see France ...).   

He has two motorbikes, three children and recently became a grandfather. 

2026 © Joe Navin
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