About Joe Decker
Joe Decker is a nature photographer, author and educator living in Northern California. His work has been exhibited across the country from the Smithsonian to LACDA in Los Angeles, and he has been awarded artist residencies in Petrfiied Forest National Park, Svalbard and Greenland. He is the author of The Tuesday Composition, published by Flatbooks Publishing.
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Joe Decker School of Photography, © Josh Andrews
Joe's nature photography is a descendent of the West Coast school of landscape photography, showing influences by such artists as Galen Rowell and Frans Lanting. Color, often intensely (but still accurately) saturated, is often a forward element of his work, while composition is often used to signify deeper, more personal levels of the captured experience.
Self-taught early in his photographic career, Joe began studying with other masters of nature photography in the late 1990s, including Galen Rowell, Richard Knepp, and Bill Atkinson.
In 1999, Joe published his award-winning body of work October, entirely taken from images created during a particular month in the Eastern Sierra.
In 2003, one of Joe's landscape photographs, Granite and Snow, Little Lakes Valley was "highly honored" by the Nature's Best Foundation at the National Museum of National History, part of the Smithsonian.
In 2005, his image Frightened Tree and Pogonip was awarded first prize in the show Monochrome by Mark Citret, photographer and former assistant to Ansel Adams.
In 2006, his image Aphid and Desert Sunflower was awarded first prize in the show Flower Power at the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto, California.
In 2008, the National Park Service named him an artist-in-residence at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.
In 2010, Hurtigrunten awarded him an artist residency in the Disko Bay area of West Greenland, and in 2011, followed up with an additional residency in Svalbard.
In 2012, Flatbooks acquired the rights to publish Joe's electronic book The Tuesday Composition.
In 2013, Gullkistan awarded him a 1-month artist residency, to be held January 2014, in Southwest Iceland.