Joel Pickford is a photographer, filmmaker, and author born and raised in California’s Central Valley. His photographs have been exhibited and collected at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, the Fresno Art Museum, the Jordan Schnitzler Museum of Art at the University of Oregon, The Octagon Museum of Southern Art and the Weston Gallery, among other venues. His documentary film work has been seen on PBS stations throughout the country. Joel is the author of California Light, the first art book ever to combine digital reproduction with Hexachrome printing. Joel’s decade-long documentary project, Le Monde Creole: Photographs of Southern Louisiana, culminated in an exhibition that premiered at the Fresno Art Museum in 2007 and traveled to Centro Fotografico Manual Alvarez Bravo in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2008.
Soul Calling: A Photographic Journey Through The Hmong Diaspora was published by Heyday Books in 2012. A finalist for the 2013 Northern California Book Award in creative nonfiction, Soul Calling is the result of eight years of field work in California and Laos. A companion exhibition opened in three galleries at the Fresno Art Museum. A second exhibition opened at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee in 2013 and is now permanently installed at the Hmong American Peace Academy. Joel holds a master’s degree in Documentary Studies and Southeast Asian Studies at California State University, Fresno. His scholarly research also includes ethnographic fieldwork on the Laotian language and culture.
