Joseph Rafferty III is a visual artist currently based in the American South. Raised Pagan in the counter-culture of San Francisco by his bohemian mother - a model turned fashion buyer - Rafferty’s early life was upended at age eight by her traumatic death. He was subsequently moved to Southern California to live with a totalitarian, Born-Again Christian father, an environmental lawyer—who did not protect his son’s environment. It was in high school that Rafferty discovered photography, using a small trust from his mother to purchase cameras as a way of channeling her spirit: “If I purchase cameras she'll always be with me.”
Following a decade defined by military enlistment and a burgeoning career shooting for American magazines - work he eventually walked away from to reclaim creative control - Rafferty spent sixteen years as the primary caregiver for his children. This hiatus ended in 2020 when he attended the first online Creative Practices Program at the International Center of Photography—an experience he describes as “transformative.”
His first solo exhibition, “Love is All Heart Break... Until it Isn’t” at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, NC, 2022–23. Deeply invested in the local arts community, he co-founded the monthly Collage Club at The Fruit in Durham, NC in 2024.
Presently, Rafferty is guest lecturer in art department East Carolina University and 2026 MFA Candidate in the iTi (Image Text Program) at the University of Cornell, on Fellowship.