#LeicaConversations

Recorded - August 20, 2020

From AL SOL to ZOI and back to Boston, Stella Johnson has been seeing, investigating and reflecting culture, community and family over the last forty years. She will talk about her process in crafting an image that brings the viewer to look again and again. Stella will also discuss how and why she has developed lifelong relationships with the people she photographs, and what that means to the photographic narrative. Learning to see requires perseverance, patience, preparation, and knowing what to look for when you encounter those unexpected moments.

Hosted by the Tom A. Smith - Director of the Leica Akademie USA.

#LeicaConversations

BIO:

Stella Johnson is a photographer and educator known for her passionate and honest documentary projects. She received a Core Fulbright Scholar Grant to photograph in Mexico in 2003, and Fulbright Specialist grants to teach in Mexico in 2006 and in Colombia in 2018.
The University of Maine Press published her first monograph, Al Sol: Photographs from Mexico, Cameroon and Nicaragua in 2008. ZOI, her second monograph, was published in 2018 by Wild Greek Press.
A dedicated educator, Johnson holds teaching positions at Boston University and Lesley University College of Art and Design. She also teaches workshops in Greece, Cuba, Colombia and Mexico. Johnson holds a BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute and an MS in Journalism from Boston University.

Johnson’s photographs have been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally. Her work is held in public collections including The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, The Haggerty Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Portland Museum of Art, and The Southeast Museum of Photography, among others.

She was a 2018 and 2013 finalist for the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship, Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50, twice, and a nominee for the Boston Foundation’s Brother Thomas Fellowship. Johnson’s work has received numerous honors including a New England Foundation for the Arts Cultural Collaborative Artist-in-Residence Grant and Julia Margaret Cameron Award.