
joe mazza owner/photographer brave lux inc
Joe Mazza is an award winning portrait, advertising, theater, and editorial photographer based in Chicago. Over the past 30 years, he’s worked as an artist in many media– playwrighting, puppetry, film, radio, and theater– all of which inform how he creates with a camera.
Awards include Communication Arts Photography Annual (2019), Graphis Photography Annual (2019 and 2020 | 3 Gold and 6 Silver), PDN Photography Annual 2019, Best of ASMP (2018 and 2019), and WPPI Second Half, 2019 (3 Silver Awards).
Some of Joe’s clients: Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Court Theatre, Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, Writers Theatre, Marriott Theatre, The Artistic Home, The Goodman, The New Colony, Babes With Blades, The Non-Equity Jeff Awards, Chicago Opera Theater, Bella Voce Chicago, Haven Chicago, Theater Oobleck, Porchlight Music Theatre, Northlight Theatre, Schaumburg Summer Theatre, Catharsis Productions, Dandelion Theatre, Compass Theatre, The Second City, Loyola University Chicago Theatre, The Theatre School at DePaul University, The Plagiarists, The Chicago Inclusion Project, Steppenwolf, Watertower Theatre, The Center for Independent Futures, Timeline Theatre, Firebrand Theatre, Underscore Theatre, The Neo-Futurists, Oracle Productions, Blair Thomas and Company, WildClaw Theatre, Irish Theatre of Chicago, Prologue Theatre, About Face Theatre, The House Theatre, Definition Theatre, Lakeside Shakespeare Theatre, Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, The Gift Theatre, Raven Theatre, The Den Theatre, The New York Times, Crain’s, TimeOut Chicago, Chicago Reader, American Theatre Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Magazine, North Shore Magazine, and others.
Since 2013, he’s photographed actors, artistic directors, artists, designers, chefs, architects in over 30 shoots for Newcity’s “Leaders of Chicago Culture”.
His play “Art and Her Ugly Sisters” was a Eugene O’Neill Semifinalist– and his solo puppet tragi-toon, “The Hyperbolist” has been performed in Chicago, NYC at HERE Arts Center and The Red Room, and Boston.
Cover shoot for Newcity’s “Design 50”, March 2014. Included are architects Helmut Jahn, Ross Wimer, Brad Lynch (Brininstool + Lynch: http://www.brininstool-lynch.com) and designers Brenda Bergen (http://www.wink-design.com), Alisa Wolfson (Leo Burnett)