I am a native of Shreveport and returned home in 1976 with a degree in communications from Washington and Lee University. After working as a darkroom technician at a photo lab for over four years, I left the darkroom to get behind the camera and concentrate on magazine photojournalism, commercial photography and photo-illustrated books. Today, in 2009, my main concentration is studio and location commercial photography, with strong emphases on architecture, advertising, stock and commercial portraiture.
Throughout my career, I have regularly created images that are strictly personal and exist only to celebrate the medium of photography, the world around me and my connection to this strange and wonderful world. Many times, my images begin with the real world but leave it for a different place spun from my imagination with assistance from Photoshop. My muse is the queen of this other world. Sometimes, my professional and personal photographic worlds collide, but most of the time they meld, each influencing the other.
Although my work has often taken me far, far from home, it has mostly been concentrated in the community of Shreveport and Bossier City and in my beloved state of Louisiana, its people, architecture and culture.
The Triumph Over Tragedy project takes me back to my love of telling stories through the photo essay. Call it producing a bigger picture through many small ones. It is interesting that the photo essay came of age during the 1930’s in such magazines as Life and Look. The images in this project should be taken together as a whole instead of as individual images. With the current trend in our culture’s short attention span and the devolution of newspapers and journalism magazines, photo essays have become more and more rare. Today, they exist, but are primarily the result of self-assignments and are usually found only on the web. These photographers are passionate story-tellers and feel compelled to tell a story with their chosen medium. Story-telling is part of our–everyone’s–human nature.
This is why it is a distinct honor to be a part of this unique and ambitious project!
If you have questions or need my services, feel free to contact my office manager, Paula O’Neal, or me.
1301 Louisiana Ave.
Shreveport, LA 71101
318-221-2299
Email: njohnson@njphoto.com
Website: www.njphoto.com
