Joseph Heathcott is a writer, artist, and educator based in New York, where he teaches at The New School. He has held visiting fellowships and art residencies at Princeton University School of Architecture, Chelsea College of Art and Design in London, the Bogliasco Foundation in Genoa, and the Russell Sage Foundation. He has also taught at the London School of Economics, University of Vienna, and Sciences Po Paris.
His work has appeared in numerous exhibits and juried art shows, including the Queens Museum, MIT Galleries, Museo Banco de México, Black Box Gallery in Portland, Oceana Gallery San Francisco, and the Chicago Center for Photojournalism. His work has also been featured in publications such as Domus, Camera Obscura, Folly, Lens Culture, Mediapolis, and The Guardian. His most recent book, Global Queens: An Urban Mosaic (Fordham 2023) features 250 photographs of New York's most enigmatic borough. His next book of photographs, Mexico City Unveiled, is forthcoming from Anthem Press in 2026.
Heathcott grew up in the Industrial Midwest, which disposed him toward mundane subjects, haunted precincts, and fragmented landscapes. He learned to shoot on his father's 1968 Mamia Sekor DTL1000, and served as a photographer and cartoonist for his high school newspaper. He pursued photography and printmaking in college, and spent many years creating political agitprop through xerography, collage, stamp and mail art. He also spent four years in radio, three on air as a jazz and freeform dj at KWUR St. Louis, and one as a program producer at WFIU in Bloomington, Indiana.
Much of Heathcott's current work explores human connections to material worlds through everyday objects and surroundings. He is particularly interested in the uncanny and fugitive dimensions of space, place, and landscape. His influences include thinkers Walter Benjamin, James Baldwin, and Stuart Hall; the Situationist and Fluxus movements; photographers Teenie Harris, Weegee, Gordon Parks, Robert Doisneau, Vivian Maier, and the Exit Photography Group UK; and artists Ray Johnson, Minnie Evans, Gertrude Morgan, Joseph Cornell, and Simon Rodia.
Joseph Heathcot lives in Jackson Heights, Queens with his wife Ashley Cruce and two cats, Ventana and Radar.
