Dancer turned ad man but has always a photographer.

Joe Welbes found an outlet in photography, music, and dance to escape the Houston suburb where he grew up. At an early age, he left his parents home to train with the San Francisco Ballet School and would take photos of the streets and alleys of the city. Entirely self-taught, he found inspiration from masters like Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, and William Eggleston, as well as 1970s cinema. He continued to hone his craft while building a career as a professional ballet dancer that took him across the United States and eventually Toronto, Ontario. 

After retiring from dance in 2009, he moved to Austin, TX to begin his next chapter in life in the advertising industry, which only pushed him further to create art whenever he found the time. What was once a hobby is now an obsession. Today, he shoots entirely on film, on his endless quest to capture the irreversible passage of time.