About — Joseph Backus

The Business

Joseph Backus Photography is a boutique photography business that provides unique, interesting, high quality photographic fine art prints of people, places and events in around the historic city of Old Town Alexandria Virginia. All work is signed, complete with certificate of authenticity, printed, matted and sleeved utilizing archival materials for lasting enjoyment. These images may be purchased through the web site as well as farmers’ markets, craft shows, visitors’ centers and selected retail outlets in around Old Town.

Post cards, holiday & greeting cards, posters and calendars may be available upon request. In addition to providing quality one-of-kind artwork and souvenir pieces, Joe is available for custom architectural and seasonal event photography for framing or to be used for personalized cards or holiday greeting cards. For example, a “from our house to your house” Christmas card with a custom image of your own seasonally decorated home is popular.

The Photographer

Joe had the great good fortune to be born in the 1950’s and grow in a small town, one of four brothers in two sets of homemade bunk beds in the same bedroom. This was a more simple time, before air conditioners, when milk was delivered to your front porch and you came home when the street lights came on, unless you were staying out late to catch lightning bugs. Where it was a Sunday evening family event to watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom followed by The Wonderful World of Disney on a B&W television and the commercials were for iconic brands such as Proctor & Gamble (P&G), General Mills and General Electric (GE).

The 1960’s saw Joe become fascinated by both form and function. He began to draw and analyze all that he saw, winning his first art contest at the age of 8 and receiving his first B&W film camera as a present from his grandparents on his 10th birthday. During the 1970’s Joe found himself in the military where he began to travel, he really did “join the Army and see the world”. First coast to coast, then to most of Europe where he invested in his first Nikon SLR and photo journaled his travels, living on fruit, cheese, hard bread and wine, sleeping under the stars at Stonehenge, on the beaches of the Mediterranean, climbing the Eiffel Tower and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, developing his interest in travel, people, cultures and architectural photography.

In the 1980’s Joe returned to the states to finish college where he continued his dichotomy of interest for both form and function, by studying art and music while getting functional (i.e. employable) degrees in computer science and economics and later an MBA. This is when he met and married his equally creative wife Carolyn and begin his corporate career, which would see him work for four Fortune 100 companies, one of which was GE (i.e. one of his childhood iconic brand companies) where he became a global marketing manager which allowed him mix his creative and business acumen and expand his interest into product photography. In the 1990’s Joe fed his love of travel and passion for people and cultures by traveling and living outside the country 3 more times through his business career as well as through international humanitarian mission trips.

In the early 2000’s Joe was able to feed his creative side vicariously through his two daughters, helping one study journalism & advertising and the other study graphic design & photography including providing them the opportunity to travel throughout Europe and study art in Florence. The decade of the 2010’s has Joe graduating from The Washington School of Photography and maintaining his roots by taking simple photographs that transcend time, often manually with his old high quality metal & glass film camera lenses, of his children, grand children and the historic homes, buildings and people in Old Town Alexandria Virginia and the Washington DC area where he currently resides.