Joe Johnson
MFA ’04 Photography
These photographs are from the project Sometimes Always Never were made since the pandemic and most often with my young twin boys in tow. After a career engaged in highly circumscribed project-oriented work, I left the tripod and my formal rubric at home. Instead, I favored the small hand camera and black and white film of my early education, making “notes” wherever I happened to be without expectation. Aside from the turmoil of our common predicament, I set about the task of keeping up a highly local art practice during lockdown in between matters that seemed more pressing. I continued when the world opened again, though it seems none of us have exhaled since. Reviewing the pictures, I imagine all visible things to be inflected by the chaos of our current moment, divulging previously withheld significance–subjects that are known but in a way that feels less secure. The boys pop into the mix anonymously as the pictures are made while picking up a birthday cake, getting the mail, soccer practice, visiting relatives. So, the title is paternal, referencing a convention my father taught me to properly fasten a three-button suit jacket.
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Joe Johnson’s works are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, The Center for Creative Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, New York Artist Book Library and the University of Macau, among others. His photographs have been the subject of articles and reviews in Art in America, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Wired Magazine Raw File, Esquire Magazine Russia, and YVI Magazine in the Netherlands. His recent book Office Hours with Joe Johnson was exhibited as a first book prize shortlist honoree by the Aperture Foundation at Paris Photo. He holds an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. The recipient of Center Santa Fe’s Callanan Excellence in Teaching Award, Johnson currently teaches at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
