One Day, One Photo, at a Time

How one photographer is using art, a sailboat, and the ocean breeze to stay alive

By Ren Brabenec | Aug. 16, 2025

According to Dr. Andrew Wang of Yale School of Medicine, autoimmune diseases are on the rise. Not only are more people being diagnosed with such ailments year over year, but the list of named autoimmune diseases is getting longer, too.

“Our genes haven’t changed much in the last 70 years,” says Wang. “But our current environment is vastly different.”

While the environment might be changing in ways that harm us, for some, changing their environment is exactly what they must do to stay alive, as is the case with photographer Joe Clark.

A Background in Sailing and Photography

“I was born and raised on the Ludington-area shores of Lake Michigan, where my family had lived for generations,” says Clark. “I had to hear all about sailboats from a very early age thanks to my shipbuilder grandfather, but it didn’t take long for me to become just as obsessed as he was. I started restoring an old racing boat when I was 16, and I’ve always had a sailboat since.”

Clark migrated north and graduated high school in Glen Arbor. When he took a job as a firefighter and EMS responder in Interlochen, solo sailing expeditions on Grand Traverse Bay during his days off became his way of coping with long hours and stressful work conditions. Clark left the TC area in 2014, moved to Petoskey, and began exploring another of his many passions: photography.

“Just as with a sailboat, a camera demands your attention and insists you have some command of the instrument in your hands,” Clark says. With a chuckle, he ticks off the various hobbies he’s had—hobbies that became side hustles that became passions that became careers.

“Scientific and technical instruments have always fascinated me,” Clark says, adding that he finds the greatest joy in the near-spiritual marriage between science and art, be it the euphoria at the helm of a wind-powered means of travel, or the wonder during the mere seconds-long opportunity one has to capture a once-in-a-lifetime sunset.

Gallery Owner, Teacher, Photographer, Printer, Framer

Once in Petoskey, Clark and his then-girlfriend-now-wife opened Glass Lakes Photography, a gallery where prints, canvases, and metal signs were just some of the couple’s many offerings. The pair also shot portrait clients and commercial businesses, provided printing services, and served as a custom frame shop. From time to time, Clark’s technical know-how was called upon to perform delicate artwork analysis and other high-stakes tasks that, as Clark puts it, “others wouldn’t touch.”

Clark also taught classes, something he’s still interested in. “I call it Driver’s Ed for the camera,” he says. Clark would schedule several people for a course on the same technical aspects of photography that had fascinated him as a child. “Aperture, sensitivity, and shutter speed,” Clark says. “We’d get folks trained up on those, then we’d go on a field trip to Headlands Dark Sky Park, and do some shooting. We’d meet the next day and talk about what we’d learned.”

A Disease Unlike Any Other

A man with a baritone voice built for giving outdoor photography lectures or speaking over ocean winds, Clark lets out an audible sigh when we ask him about the autoimmune disease that sent him away from his beloved northern Michigan.

“In 2020, I began experiencing arthritic symptoms that would appear and vanish without any real explanation. As it got worse, the inflammation manifested in many ways: loss of hearing, vertigo problems, balance issues, gastrointestinal complications including nausea and vomiting, memory loss, migraines—you name it.”

But what worried Clark most was the extreme pain he was experiencing throughout his musculoskeletal system. “From pretty early on in the disease, I would get so much pain in my hands, legs, and back that I couldn’t move,” Clark says. “It would get so bad I couldn’t physically hold a camera in my hands, much less operate it. I couldn’t wrap canvas. I couldn’t play with my son. I couldn’t hold my wife’s hand. If I had been an animal suffering in that manner, I would have been euthanized.”

Back to the Water

The pandemic afforded some time away from the gallery, so as Clark was suffering the onset of a confusing and rapidly worsening autoimmune disease, he sought comfort in what had always eased his mind: sailing.

Clark noticed that trips down to the water and onto the boat always seemed to leave him feeling better, which led to a hypothesis that the allergens on the land, around his property, and in his home and studio were the main culprits in his condition. Inspired, Clark pored over medical journals late into the night and traveled across the state to speak with specialists even as his condition continued to deteriorate.

The hypothesis became a theory which became a prescription: Clark needed to leave northern Michigan, or he might die.

So he did. Since 2021, Clark, his wife, their son, and their dogs have led a mostly nomadic lifestyle. It took a few tries to get it right, but every time the family was able to get onto their 1984-built 38-foot-long sailboat for extended periods, Clark experienced significant relief from his symptoms. Because of that, Clark named the vessel “Animaashi,” which is Ojibwe for “Blown by the wind, he/she flies, soars, and sails.”

Advice for Artists with Disabilities

“I guess I’ve just been in fight-or-flight mode since 2020,” Clark says when we ask how he juggles a photography career, homeschooling a child, and coping with a disease that incapacitates him if he spends too much time on dry land.

“It’s a hard road, and our American culture makes it even harder,” Clark says. “Access to public resources and healthcare is almost impossible when you’re nomadic, your primary care doctor changes with the season, and your residence isn’t a house with a mailbox but a sailboat on the Atlantic Ocean.”

Challenges abound, but Clark is surviving. And along the way, he’s also setting an example for how others can make a living as an artist despite a life-changing disability.

“Take one challenge at a time, one day at a time, and find a solution,” Clark says. “Then take the next challenge, one day at a time, and find a solution. You’re the only one who can know what you have to do next in order to keep on keeping on, so find a way to get relief, joy, and a sense of accomplishment, despite your limitations. Find a way to return your functionality, and be willing to advocate for yourself.”

“This is a challenging lifestyle,” he concludes. “It’s a challenging way to exist, but if I don’t do it, I won’t be able to be a father and husband. It’s a means of survival, and when you’re surviving, you just have to take it one day at a time.”

Where to Find Joe Clark

Clark is living the real-life version of the Where’s Waldo books. When we spoke with him, Clark and his family were anchored in the small harbor town of Oriental, North Carolina, with plans to set sail soon to get out of the path of this year’s hurricanes.

As for what’s next?

“I’d like to do more work in my Public Lands and Lost Lands collections,” Clark says, referencing his efforts to use photography to document America’s public lands throughout the East Coast, primarily the barrier islands that protect many of the beach towns in the region. The project aims to use photography to document critical lands that, due to climate change, may be underwater in a few years.

Clark supports his family through art sales, including prints, canvases, metal signs, and soon-to-be coffee mugs, calendars, and other items featuring his work. His photography is on display and available for purchase at joeclarkphotographer.com.