About the Project

Aftermath: The Boston Marathon Bombings, is a 170-page hardcover photography book documenting the two-and-a-half year period following the bombings at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. The images in the book were seen through the photographic eye of Joshua Touster, a professional photographer living in Watertown, MA, one of the central locations in the midst of the unfolding events.

Beginning with an introductory essay by Touster and an eyewitness account at the moment when the bombs exploded by Boston Globe reporter David Abel, Aftermath: The Boston Marathon Bombings takes the viewer on a photographic journey that includes the makeshift memorials, the lockdown, crime scenes, the Red Sox victory parade, the first anniversary, the two subsequent Boston Marathons, One Boston Day, the trial of perpetrator Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and the construction of permanent memorials to the victims. An in-depth chronology of all relevant events is also included.

Aftermath: The Boston Marathon Bombings is a testament to a city, a region, and its residents who struggled to overcome the physical, emotional and psychological wounds that the bombings created—and what it took to begin to overcome them.

About the Author

Joshua Touster received his first camera at the age of four, and when he was 11 he turned the bathroom in his New York City apartment into his first darkroom.

Since then, he received his MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design, was on tour with Michael Jackson for seven weeks, and spent numerous seasons photographing the Los Angeles Lakers, the New England Patriots and the Boston Red Sox. He has shot absolutely everywhere there is to photograph at a bevy of Boston area hospitals (especially Mass General), taught photography at many institutions including Wellesley College, Curry College, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, photographed in more clubs, concert halls, and outdoor festivals then he could possibly remember, lectured about his work in prisons and universities, photographed thousands of weddings, bar mitzvahs, and corporate events, and shot for both profit and non-profits clients ranging from Harvard University to the Union of Concerned Scientists to IBM.

He has shown his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. He received an artist-in-residency grant from Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, and spent an entire season photographing the minor league baseball team the Brockton Rox (“We even came within one inning of winning the championship!”) which resulted in his book A Season on The Rox. He has photographed ballet dancers, artists, athletes, and politicians, toured on and off for five years with the band Phish, documented the Occupy Movement in both Boston and on Wall Street, and spent six years knee-deep in the world of horse racing at Suffolk Downs Race Track and Saratoga Race Course. Aftermath: The Boston Marathon Bombings is a culmination of two-and-a-half years of engaging work about a tragic event, the strength of the human spirit and the essential nature of community.

Touster is constantly photographing his family, friends, and almost everything he comes in contact with (since he almost always carries a camera with him). He responds empathetically to the people he meets—and photographs. He responds with great joy to light, movement, weather, humanity, and the visual gymnastics that occur in this crazy world of ours, and he does his best to capture those elements in his photographs.