Joe Buchoff remembers what it was like to sit under a desk in the Rutgers library, waking up to police boots demanding he leave because he didn’t belong there anymore. He remembers nights on park benches in Colombia, his stomach empty, the fear in his bones when a man tried to steal his last belongings. He remembers the relentless chaos of a childhood marked by constant moves, medication he didn’t need, a revolving door of uncertainty, and a household that didn’t feel safe.

But what Joe Buchoff remembers most isn’t the fear—it’s the faith.

“I was poor outside of me, but I was so abundant inside,” he says, reflecting on the years he spent without a home, refusing to return to college despite family pleading to “just go back” so they would pay his bills again. Joe had made a choice: to live life on his own terms, no matter what it cost.

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The Unlikely Start

Before he was a transformational photographer helping men around the world see themselves as confident and worthy, Joe was a kid in Hershey, Pennsylvania, where life was calm and sweet-smelling. But after his family moved to California, everything shifted. Divorce, financial instability, and constant relocation defined his teenage years. By the time he was 18, he had lived in over a dozen homes.

At 15, while riding the train two hours each way to a private school he hated, Joe began to realize he didn’t fit into the system. He was brilliant in math but placed in classes too easy for him, frustrated by a world that didn’t see or nurture him. Shoplifting energy drinks became a daily act of rebellion. Eventually, he was placed in a group home, where he experienced what felt like “prison lite,” under the inconsistent rules of staff whose moods could determine if he was grounded for a week over a single curse word.

By the time he left the group home at 18, Joe had internalized a story of himself as broken, labeled with supposed emotional and learning disabilities, dependent on systems outside himself for decisions about his future.

But there was a flicker inside him. A defiance. A hunger for freedom.