Josh Valcarcel is a photographer and visual storyteller with more than two decades of professional experience, drawn to the people, technology, and ideas that shape our world.

For nearly a decade, he served as a Scientific Photographer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, documenting all aspects of human spaceflight. His work took him from engineering tests and astronaut training to Mission Control, crew recovery operations, and some of NASA’s most consequential exploration efforts, including the agency’s return to the Moon through Artemis. In 2024, he delivered a TEDx talk at Carnegie Mellon University about his experience documenting the Artemis program and the role photography plays in telling the story of exploration.

Previously, Josh was a staff photographer and photo editor at WIRED, where he helped curate photography for the web while regularly photographing portraits, products, and still life across the brand. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Visual Journalism from Brooks Institute, where he was selected to participate in the renowned Eddie Adams Workshop (EAW XXV).

Before Brooks, Josh spent five years in the U.S. Navy as a Mass Communication Specialist, reporting, photographing, and producing stories for radio, print, and televised broadcast. His assignments took him from aircraft carrier flight decks to remote island nations throughout the Pacific, experiences that helped shape both his approach to storytelling and his instinct for finding the human story inside larger events.

Josh’s work has appeared in publications and media around the world. At its core, his photography is driven by curiosity and a sense of wonder: an interest in people, machines, places, and the things we build in pursuit of something larger than ourselves – and in what those things reveal about who we are.