Photography Educator: Eirik Johnson – LENSCRATCH

Photography Educator is a month-to-month collection on Lenscratch. Once a month, we have fun a devoted images instructor by sharing their insights, methods and excellence in inspiring college students of all ages. These educators play a important function in pupil growth, appearing as mentors and guides who create environments the place college students really feel valued and supported, fostering confidence and resilience.

For practically two years, I’ve had the privilege of celebrating devoted and inventive images educators every month. Every time I obtain their responses to my interview questions, I’m heartened by their generosity and dedication. These academics go above and past for his or her college students. Their pupil work that I function is a robust testomony to the eagerness with which these academics educate.

Eirik Johnson is a kind of academics. Although we haven’t met in individual, I’ve been a fan of his photographic work for a very long time. His photos remodel the on a regular basis into surprise; they invite me to look twice, get shut, step again and maintain nonetheless. Thank you, Eirik, for the work that you simply do with college students of all ages and for bringing such genuine pictures, books, and immersive experiences into the world.

This article begins with a sampling of Eirik’s photographic works.

I’m a Seattle-based photographic artist whose work navigates the often-makeshift connections that kind on the intersections of latest environmental, social, and financial points.  My work references, and at occasions subverts, images’s capability to create lyrical and transcendent paperwork.  I work with varied modes of presentation from revealed e-book to experiential sound and site-specific set up to deliver a singular and unique voice to the photographic medium.

I’m at all times interested in how images educators handle to show with depth whereas persevering with to create new and unique work. Eirik appears to have discovered the way in which to do each. Read on for Eirik’s insights and responses to my questions.

ES: How and why did you get into educating?
EJ:I got here to educating after receiving my MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute (relaxation in peace). I’ve at all times been drawn to the concept of a instructor as a part of an ongoing dialog or lineage. I wished to change into part of that story. So, after grad college, I taught as an adjunct teacher for a few years in San Francisco and Oakland. From 2006-2011, I served on the photograph division college at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. That was basically an schooling in educating, as I co-taught alongside colleagues together with Barbara Bosworth, Abelardo Morell, and David Hilliard, amongst others. In shifting again to my native Seattle, I’ve chosen to construct up the neighborhood at Photographic Center Northwest, each as a college member but additionally as Programs Chair, in control of instructional programming.
ES: Did you have got an influential images mentor or instructor? What was their greatest affect on you?
EJ: Graduate college at SFAI was a pivotal time for me, each as a younger artist, but additionally as an aspiring educator. I had the nice fortune to work frequently with each Linda Connor and Henry Wessell. In Linda, I found the significance of constructing neighborhood, particularly throughout the broader photographic arts ecosystem. She is the excessive priestess of the Bay Area photograph neighborhood and made her college students really feel related to a lineage and historical past, as if we had been an extra chapter in that story.
In Hank, I discovered a guiding mild in listening to 1’s instinct. He believed within the magic of the on a regular basis and met his college students with each a smile and criticality. If a selected critique evaluate left a pupil feeling low, Hank would look over, a sparkle in his eye, and easily say, “just go shoot”. From one other professor, it may need come throughout as over-simplistic, however all one needed to do was have a look at Hank’s personal work to grasp that this was his personal mantra. The world is a curiously fantastic place, so simply go be current in it.
ES: What profession accomplishments are you most pleased with?
EJ: It’s laborious to single out accomplishments, however trying again on reflection, sure moments from my profession appear to have been pivotal. Very early on, I obtained a Fulbright Fellowship to Peru in 1999. That expertise of working independently overseas, of constructing mates, gaining entry, and honing my craft, was tremendously distinctive and essential.

Likewise, publishing my second monograph “Sawdust Mountain” with Aperture nonetheless looks like an not possible dream that grew to become actuality. The e-book grew to become a touring exhibition and I used to be capable of collaborate with a number of fantastic writers on the e-book. It was additionally whereas engaged on this mission, that I felt a craving to return to the Northwest, each as a house but additionally as an ongoing place of inventive inspiration.

That brings me to my current mission “Leviathan Rising”, a physique of labor exploring trans-oceanic commerce and environmental fragility, that includes each images, sound, and set up. It’s an formidable mission that’s set to be revealed by MW Editions in Fall 2026.

ES: How do you combine your expertise and success as an artist into your educating follow?
EJ: I worth sharing my expertise, when attainable, with my college students. I believe there’s nice worth in doing so, if it aligns with the content material of the course. What I imply by that’s, it may be useful to share your expertise in a method that offers context or a method of demystifying the intimidating artwork world. All that being mentioned, probably the most essential issues that I’ve discovered is that there actually is nobody clear set path or strategy to the artwork world. The measurement of success could be elusive and admittedly, no matter yard stick was used to measure such achievements after I was a pupil 20-30 years in the past has modified significantly.
ES: How do you join together with your college students?
EJ: The wonderful factor about educating at Photographic Center Northwest is that I’ve college students ranging in age from early twenties to late seventies. It makes for this actually fascinating house the place so many alternative types of life expertise intermingle. As a instructor, I worth this intersection, because it’s at all times offering entry factors for connection I might by no means have dreamt of. For instance, a number of years in the past when educating my Photobook course, I had requested college students to share earlier work throughout our preliminary introductions, just a few youthful college students offered photos they’d remodeled the summer time break once they had been house visiting household and mates. Then an older pupil opened up a field of black and white prints he had just lately created from negatives shot whereas driving freight trains throughout the plains of Nebraska in the direction of the West in 1969. He was in all probability the identical age when he made these footage as the opposite college students. It supplied this beneficiant house for dialog and the entire class rapidly grew to become a decent group of mates from there on.

ES: How and the place do you discover inspiration?
EJ: I’ve come to comprehend that images has basically been a visible extension of my very energetic curiosity. For me, meaning getting out into the world and paying consideration. Whether that’s someplace out within the woods or beneath the hull of a transoceanic barge, there’s at all times one thing fascinating taking place should you’re open to it. I’ll typically have a number of concepts percolating in my head at any given time after which, after some time, considered one of them simply clicks and turns into the main focus of my consideration. Sometimes, for a few years.

Featured under is a choice of work by Eirik’s college students. Their maturity and creative imaginative and prescient replicate Eirik’s present for educating and his means to assist college students develop into assured inventive photographers.

Eirik was an extremely essential a part of my graduate college expertise. Above all, I keep in mind his professionalism and generosity towards college students—he was at all times out there and deeply invested in serving to us develop, each in our work and in our careers. I’ve nice respect for his deep understanding of images and his distinctive technical command of the medium as an artist.
Phillip Jung
IG: philjung_hnl
Website: jungphil.com

I’m actually grateful to have had Eirik Johnson as a instructor and mentor whereas creating my thesis work at Photographic Center Northwest. He brings a welcoming calm to the inventive course of, balancing actual rigor and ambition with openness and persistence. The work I developed throughout the supportive neighborhood at Photographic Center Northwest grew to become a basis for my ongoing artwork follow.
Selena Kearney
IG: @latchselena
Website:  www.selenakearney.com

Eirik Johnson is an excellent, regular presence within the images neighborhood. His creative aesthetic and considerate exploration of the atmosphere conjures up me to create clear and purposeful work. Over the previous decade through which Eirik has been a instructor, mentor, and advisor to me, I’ve appreciated how he’s at all times encouraging, inclusive, and supportive. He sees every pupil’s potential and guides us with intentionality and a collaborative spirit.
Elisabeth Vasquez Hein
IG:fuzzybrowngirl
Website: elisabethvasquezhein.com

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Eirik Johnson (b. 1974, Seattle) makes conceptually grounded work analyzing the worldwide arc and intersections of latest environmental, social, and financial points. Employing varied modes of presentation from photobooks to experiential photograph and sound-based set up, Johnson’s photographic and interdisciplinary tasks discover the marks and connections fashioned within the friction of this difficult relationship. Johnson obtained his BFA and BA from the University of Washington, Seattle, WA and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has exhibited his work at establishments together with the Aperture Foundation, NY, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston MA, and the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA. Johnson’s work is within the everlasting collections of establishments together with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, NY, the Nevada Art Museum, Reno, NV, and the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY. His monographs embody Road to Nowhere (self-published), Barrow Cabins (Ice Fog Press), PINE (Minor Matters Books), Sawdust Mountain (Aperture Books), and BORDERLANDS (Twin Palms Publishers). His editorial purchasers embody Travel+Leisure, New York Times Magazine, Dwell, and Metropolis. Johnson serves as Programs Chair at Photographic Center Northwest and his work is represented by Koplin del Rio Gallery, Seattle, WA.

Upcoming Publications & Exhibitions:
Leviathan Rising upcoming monograph to be revealed Fall 2026 by MW Editions
An exhibition of Leviathan Rising will happen in October-January on the Tacoma Art Museum
New restricted version artist e-book Another Roadside Balloon now out there.