After spending 15 years working as a staff photographer and multimedia field reporter and producer, Josh Meltzer began teaching in 2009 as a Photojournalist-in-Residence at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, KY where he teaches photojournalism and multimedia storytelling.
While working at The Roanoke Times and roanoke.com, Josh developed an interest in using audio to tell stories with his pictures, and produced his first audio slideshow in 1999. Throughout his 9 years there, covering the community of southwestern Virginia, Josh produced over 100 audio slideshows and later dozens of video stories.
In 2006 he was named Photojournalist of the Year by the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) Best of Photojournalism competition for newspapers under a circulation of 115,000 for his portfolio. More recently his portfolios, stories, audio slideshows and videos have received recognition from the Northern Short Course, Southern Short Course, Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, Best of Photojournalism contests, and Society of Newspaper Design.
In 2009, a long-term project on aging and caregivers, Age of Uncertainty, was awarded the first place documentary prize by the Pictures of the Year International.
In 2008 Josh received a Fulbright Grant from the U.S. State Department to live and work in Guadalajara, México. There he produced stories documenting the migration of indigenous families from rural to urban regions within México. In addition, he led a year-long program, Listen to My Pictures, which taught photography to 19 street children, culminating in a large gallery exhibition of 50 of their images.
Josh has lectured with the NPPA’s Flying Short Course, judged and spoke at the state photojournalism associations of Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina and the Minnesota, lectured to the Associated Press Managing Editors Association, and spoke at his alma mater, Carleton College. Josh was on the faculty of the NPPA Multimedia Immersion Workshop and Western Kentucky University’s Mountain Workshop. Most recently he has been one of the organizers of the Truth With A Camera Workshops, held in Guadalajara in 2009 and Quito, Ecuador in 2010.
This is his second visit to the Maine Media Workshops. The first was in 1991 as a student in the Photo II class.
His work can be found online at www.joshmeltzer.com