Josh Upshaw

Josh Upshaw is an American model whose international career began after he was discovered buying paint at a Home Depot in Miami. His work developed through American menswear advertising and designer campaigns, while surfing and an interest in regenerative farming gave him a connection to the natural world beyond fashion photography.

In a 2020 interview with L’Officiel USA, Josh recalled being scouted about a decade earlier. Work for J.Crew, Tommy Hilfiger, and Ralph Lauren followed. Travel and collaborations with photographers became rewarding parts of the profession, but he also began looking for something that felt more personally meaningful.

A friend introduced him to Kiss the Ground, and he started learning about soil regeneration and the role agriculture could play in caring for the environment. “It’s all about educating farmers and us, the people,” he told the magazine.

Josh’s fashion portfolio expanded through magazine work and luxury advertising. He appeared in GQ Russia and joined the cast of Versace’s fall-winter 2018 campaign. A major fragrance assignment followed when he became a face of Carolina Herrera’s Bad Boy campaign in 2022, alongside Ty Ogunkoya, Aiden Andrews, and Justin Eric Martin.

His work with American labels continued too, including Banana Republic’s spring 2024 BR Classics imagery.

Surfing remains a more personal point of reference. Speaking to La Vanguardia in 2022, Josh described a father who had moved to Hawaii at sixteen and grown up around the surfing legends of the 1960s and 1970s.

“Surfing is my escape when things get difficult,” he said, translated from Spanish. Time in the water gave him a way to clear his mind, placing a private source of freedom alongside a career spent interpreting other people’s images.