Born in New York City (1941), Joseph Blum has lived in California since 1961 and is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (1965). He worked as a union boilermaker, shipfitter, and welder for twenty-five years in the shops and shipyards of the San Francisco Bay Area. He was the Recording Secretary and dispatcher of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers, AFL-CIO, Local #6, for five years.

Since retiring from the trades, Blum has dedicated himself to documenting the labor process in words and photographs. His writings and publications include his Masters thesis, "San Francisco Iron: The Industry and Its Workers From the Gold Rush to the Turn of the Century," and a chapter, entitled, "Degradation Without Deskilling: Twenty-Five Years in the San Francisco Shipyards," which appears in the book, GLOBAL ETHNOGRAPHY, published by UC Press.

Blum’s black and white photographs, many of which are in the Pictorial Collection of the Bancroft Library, document the work in the shipyards and the metal trades workshops of what was once a flourishing blue collar industry in the Bay Area. He has photographed ironworkers and other crafts constructing significant high rise buildings in downtown San Francisco, carpenters, glaziers and other crafts rebuilding the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, pear pickers in the California Delta, the construction of the Al Zampa Memorial Bridge across the Carquinez Strait, and the construction of huge maritime cranes in Shanghai, China and their delivery and installation at the Port of Oakland. His largest project, lasting more than 15 years was documenting the construction of the new east span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the largest public works project in the history of California. He photographed that project from start to finish and its opening Labor Day weekend 2013. A more recent project was photographing the iron workers constructing the 1070 foot tall Salesforce Building, the tallest building in San Francisco.

Although Blum continues to shoot film, it was on the bridge project that he began to shoot digitally, continuing to concentrate on the labor processes and work of the people who build these projects.

His photographs have been exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum, the J. Paul Leonard Library and the Gallery at San Francisco State University, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Labor Archives of San Francisco State University, the SomArts Cultural Center and at the Photo Center, San Francisco.

Blum’s photographs are in the documentary tradition of Lewis Hine, Margaret Bourke White, and Peter Stackpole. His photographs, however, are unique because of his ability to translate his knowledge of the labor process and the social relations of the work into compelling historically valuable documents.