ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER

Nikki Johnson

Nikki Johnson has exhibited her portraits and documentary photographs widely in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Her photographs depict situations that are alternately inspiring and despairing. This Mississippi-born artist creates visions that reflect economic disparities; victims of urban malaise lulled into serene contemplation, and cluttered shelves in homes with contents that yield revelations about their owners. These photographs are loaded with details — portraits of compelling people surrounded by unusual, ironic, even humorous, elements. The results of these exchanges between photographer and subject are a collection of exotic documentary, portraiture, and still-life images that embody urban and rural collisions, coded objects, and social explosions. Her images formalize the coincidental.

Johnson holds an MFA in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology as well as a BFA degree from Mississippi University for Women. She was the first photographer ever admitted to Henry Street Settlement’s Artist in Residence program, and was a participant in Fictive Days, a Berlin art residency. The New York Times art critic Holland Cotter described her photographs in the show “Back to Haunt the Hell out of You” as “disturbing and moving.”  She is also currently half of the collaborative duo Death Under Glass, a project that reveals the artistic merits of images created by microscope during death investigation.