Joshua McDevitt

Joshua McDevitt (b. 1991) is a Washington based artist. He holds an MFA from The University of Iowa and has recently been an adjunct professor at Baton Rouge Community College and Western Washington University. In addition to photography, his practice includes appropriated objects, video, and installation. By using the creative process as a means to reflect, Joshua’s work delves into memory and various issues of identity, ranging from sexual orientation to place and the definition of home.

Joshua has shown at the Society for Photographic Education conference and at Living Arts in Tulsa as part of the “4th Annual Combined Caucus Exhibition”, Manifest Gallery’s 10th Annual “MASTER PIECES” exhibition, Tropical Contemporary, and held a solo exhibition at Clamp Light Artist Studios & Gallery in San Antonio in conjunction with the month-long Fotoseptiembre USA photography festival. His exhibition, Orientation: Unsure, at Clamp Light was listed at number two in the San Antonio Current’s “Our Top 10 Picks for Fotoseptiembre 2016”.

The Things We Think We’re Missing

The Things We Think We’re Missing began after spending almost two years in Iowa feeling mostly homesick for the Pacific Northwest. About a year after I took the first photograph in the series, I had a revealing encounter. I was at dinner with my partner and his parents when his father received a call from his grandmother. She was telling him that she was in Alabama, where she (and he) had grown up. His grandmother, however, was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She suffered from dementia.

This reminded me that I often find the people and places dear to me in the minor details of where I stand. And I remembered the ability to truly feel like you are somewhere else. Throughout my life, there have been times where I laid in my bed with my eyes closed in one place and genuinely felt like I was back in another.

I worry that I will never actually find home, but constantly be reminded of it.

To view more of Joshua’s work please visit his website.