My name is Joanie Bier. I’m a photographer, creative, strategist, cold weather obsesser, and lover of peanut butter.  

While my disciplines stretch wide, my focus remains narrow: create the compelling. And in my short 26 years journeying this life thus far, I've discovered a critical distinction in that notion: what I find compelling, and what compels me, are two very different things. 

The former constitutes a list far too long to write because, well, I find lots of things compelling. And thank goodness for that, as I imagine I’d lead an awfully dull life if I felt differently. But I think there’s an underlying thematic continuity that characterizes what I find compelling, and can be summed up in a single sentiment: cohesive contradiction (which I realize sounds like a contradiction in and of itself). What I mean is that I’m intrigued by both old and new. By light and dark. By foreign and familiar. By the intersection of two counterintuitive things that can be brought seamlessly together to take shape as something new—unexpected, yet somehow harmonious—and undeniably compelling. 

I have also come to realize this connection in contrasts makes up the complexity of the human condition. Which I yearn to understand. 

The latter—what compels me, that is—is often that which I can influence and immortalize: a photograph, a written word, a story shared. It’s the permanence of perspective that I can impart on the world around me that drives me to continually explore, imagine, and create.

Both aspects represent who I am, and why I’m here.

So, on a separate but related note, I’m a dabbler in words and strategies. Brand strategies that is. I currently work at a Denver-based agency, BrandJuice, with some of the most creative, wild-minded peeps I know. I enjoy Shel Silverstein poems, horror films, Sriracha, and the rough and tumble sounds of Johnny Cash.  

And I’m happy to be here.