Tikkun olam: Hebrew for “repair the world.” These are the words that Emmy winner Josh Cogan, class of ’95, lives by.
This past September, Cogan won an Emmy for his photography in the Live Hope Love project about HIV in Jamaica. “The whole project is based on hope,” Cogan said. “It’s really easy to pity [the HIV-positive Jamaicans], but this project shows them dealing with [the disease]. Life is about persevering through difficulties.”
Cogan had to persevere through some difficulties of his own as an adolescent. He considered himself an “outsider” when he went to JC. Cogan said he felt “strange and rejected” because he was Jewish and had not gone to the main JC feeder schools like Harford Day or St. Margaret’s. Unlike the students who had gone to one of those schools, he did not already have a set group of friends when he entered high school.
However, being an outsider was “a good thing,” Cogan said, “because the most successful people around [him] today were social outsiders in high school in order to find themselves.”
As a full-time documentary and commercial photographer, Cogan has found himself. JC, though he didn’t fit in there, helped him begin his career. As a sophomore, Cogan founded “The Sophisticated,” an underground newspaper. “It helped me to start my story-telling and be counter-cultural,” he said.
Cogan now works “to document vanishing cultures and enrich our understanding of social issues through photography and new media,” according to his website, joshuacogan.com. He said that his work revolves around “faith, culture, and environment.”
“My work tries to show that there aren’t many differences between [different cultures],” Cogan said. “Most differences are of our own making.”
In his project “Beta Israel,” Cogan photographed Ethiopian Orthodox people and Jews in an attempt to show the similarities between the two religions. “My work tries to show the silliness of the barriers between cultures,” he said.
As for ‘repairing the world,’ Cogan said, “[Tikkun olam] means that the world is shattered into many pieces and we have to repair it for the generations to come by acting always to make the world a better place, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
“I try to express the humanity and glory of all people. I hope to increase communication between peoples. So I try to do that, and then I also photograph for bakeries in DC,” he laughed.
From working for those bakeries to working for National Geographic, Cogan said he has “the best job on earth – I get paid well to travel around the world and experience different peoples. You know how they say, ‘If you love what you do, you don’t work a day in your life’? Well, that’s what I do. God gave me some talent, and I use it.”
Cogan looks forward to continuing his photography in the future, even though he admitted he has no definite plans. “I have never had a plan in my life,” he said, “and so far, so good.”
Currently, along with photography, Cogan loves spending time with his family, friends, and his cancer-surviving dog, Amos. Most of all, Cogan said he loves existing. “I just love to be,” he said.
Mollyann Pais can be reached for comment at [email protected].