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Josh Bartok is a Zen Buddhist priest and a senior teacher in the Boundless Way Zen school, as well as the resident teacher at a meditation group in Boston's Back Bay.

He describes his photography primarily as Zen-inspired urban abstracts, and the painting-like quality of his work is particularly influenced by the abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, as well as Piet Mondrain and Paul Klee. Other deep influences include the modern Japanese calligrapher and painter Kaz Tanahashi, and the philosophy and work of acclaimed photograher and Zen master John Daido Loori. Josh presents his photographs mainly as giclees on canvas, to further enhance their painting-like appearance. His photographs aim, in part, at expressing the Buddhist concept of "thusness"—the extraordinary perfection of the ordinary, of everything just as it is. Both his photography and ink-paintings have been shown in Boston-area venues. He is currently self-represented.

Josh is the co-author, with Ezra Bayda, of Saying Yes to Life (Even the Hard Parts), and the authoring editor of Daily Wisdom and More Daily Wisdom, as well as Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s How to Be Happy. As the senior editor at Wisdom Publications, he has been the staff editor for over a hundred other books. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with his wife, Lizabeth Roemer.

More of his work can be found online at Shobophoto.