Joan Costa was born in Ibiza, Spain in 1968 and started working as a professional photographer in 1988, when he became a staff member at Diario de Ibiza. After working at several newspapers in Ibiza, Mallorca, and Barcelona, he moved to Madrid in 1996 and began to work with the agency Cover. He specialized in travel photography and collaborated with Traveler magazine, Viajar magazine, EPS Sunday magazine of El País, Focus, Sky, the Sunday supplement of UK Financial Times, The New York Times, Il Venerdi, and Epsilon, among others.
In 1997, Costa began a four-year project working as the official photographer of Menéndez Pelayo International University. In 2000 and 2001 he worked with AECi, Spanish International Cooperation Agency on the production of two photography books: Belize and New Mexico. In 2004 and 2005, he worked with the Community of Madrid on the production of two photography exhibitions: 'Ukraine, the eyes of the soul' and 'Russian soul secrets'. In 2006, Costa presented Naltros, a work about Ibiza’s popular culture and, in 2010, Cases d’Eivissa, a photography exhibition about Ibiza’s architecture.
In 2006, Costa began to work with scientific photography and, in 2010, became the official photographer of Malaspina 2010, an oceanographic expedition around the world to study impact of global change at the oceans.
