Growing up in suburban New York, Joe became fascinated by photography at eight years old, after borrowing his mom's Brownie Starmite camera for a class field trip to the Bronx Zoo. Except for a brief distraction as a Pre-med student at Hofstra University, (he grew to realize he was more fascinated by the microscope than the microbe) he spent the better part of his college career studying Communication Arts. However, Six credits shy of matriculation, he seized an incredible opportunity to serve as protégé to Paul Glickman and Stefan Czapsky, One year later, he was accepted into the Union as a Camera Loader, and worked his way through the ranks until 1989, when, after receiving much critical acclaim for a documentary film, Margaret (1990) on which he served as Co-Producer and Cinematographer, he upgraded his Union classification and officially became a Director of Photography.With more than twenty years of cumulative field experience, Joe has had the opportunity to work with some of the world's best (and a few of the world's worst) Directors, and yet retains his sense of humor. He embraces the opportunity to work with new technology (_QIK-2-JDJ(2002)_ was The first production ever to be photographed using the VIPER FilmStream Process) and he enjoys the challenge of working with modest resources. (Principal photography of Messenger (1994) was completed in only seven days!).
