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50 Years of Space Photography Lecture
$25. Wed. March 24, 6 PM to 8:00 PM
Other Worldly Exhibition
March 17, 2019 through 2021
Stephen Johnson Photography. Pacifica Center for the Arts
Join us for a lecture describing the inspiration and creation of Stephen Johnson’s 50 Years of Space Photography exhibition. The talk will walk through the evolution of photography in space, both remote and in human hands.
The reach of our cameras into the cosmos has reshaped our view of the solar system, galaxy and beyond. The imagination and technology of our new age astronomer/engineer explorers is documented with the enthusiasm of a boy fascinated with the space program who became a man who has spent his career pushing the limits of photography and technology.
It is an amazing story revealing a universe of mind blowing wonder.
Steve will discuss his exhibition of new prints from over 50 years of Space Photography which joined the current Life Form Exhibition for a mind-blowing journey from the living world close-up to the depths of space. The Space Exhibit evolved out of Steve’s longterm interest in the space program and views offered of the heavens and by spacecraft far away. The concentration on the exotic form of the living world of the Life Form work inspired this expressive look at the wonders of the very large and distant in this print exploration of photographs Steve had been gathering for years.
Original Stephen Johnson Prints and Public Domain image prints from the Space Photography exhibit will be for sale.
Atlantis. Air and Space Museum Annex. 2018. Stephen Johnson.
Steve with Two Prints from the Space Photography Exhibit. 2018
Detail. Chappy Crater. 2016. The Moon. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA.
Pluto. 2015. New Horizons. NASA.
Large Space Prints made on Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-4000 44 inch printer on Canon paper.
Stephen Johnson
Steve at Pebble Beach. Photo by Fiona McDonnell.
A photographer, educator and designer, Stephen has been teaching and working in photography since 1977. His books include At Mono Lake, the critically acclaimed The Great Central Valley: California's Heartland and Making a Digital Book. He runs his own photography, publishing and design company--scanning and designing his photographic books, pioneering the transition into digital photography including the field use of a Macintosh laptop and digital view cameras in the early 1990s. Stephen founded his Photography Workshop Program in 1978.
His work has included With a New Eye, his groundbreaking and historic all digital national parks project, the 2006 book Stephen Johnson On Digital Photography for O'Reilly, ongoing portfolio development and extensive lecturing. Current work features a concentration on the abstract and sensual qualities found in flora for his new project, Life Form.
Stephen's pioneering work in digital photography, desktop color and digital imaging has included software and product development for clients such as Apple, Adobe, Epson, Kodak, HP, Leaf, Ricoh and SuperMac. His work with Adobe includes the creation of the duotone curves shipped with their Photoshop software.
His photographic clients have included the Ansel Adams Publishing Trust, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Friends of Photography. Johnson's photographs have been widely published and collected internationally.
In 1999, Folio Magazine declared the publication of Johnson's digital photographs in Life Magazine to be one of the Top 15 Critical Events in magazine publishing in the twentieth century. Stephen Johnson was named as a 2003 inductee into the Photoshop Hall of Fame, recognized for his achievements in Art. Canon named Steve as one of their Explorers of Light 2006-2021.
In 1997, Life Magazine described Stephen Johnson as an artist that "...applies science to nature and creates art." His images create "...an intimacy that brings subject and viewer close in ways conventional photographs cannot."
The Photographer’s Gallery wrote in 1998: “Stephen Johnson's photography rides on the "bleeding edge" of photography's transition to a digital media. Schooled in the traditions of fine-art western landscape photography, Johnson has taken his understanding of traditional photographic processes and brought those skills to bear on the emerging technologies and aesthetics of digital photography. He has pushed technology companies to rise to the best of what imagemaking can be, and pushed his own vision of how we see and record light in the natural world. This has led him to conclude that the way we have traditionally captured images with silver-based photography has been a poor and distortive view of the real and rich world before our eyes. His photographs look almost "unphotographic" in their clarity and purity of color. He shows us a world we know, but rarely see on paper. His is a truly remarkable vision.”
Stephen Johnson Biography
Workshop Testimonials
Stephen has received numerous awards and grants for his photographic work, including an NEA for At Mono Lake, awards from the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, the Commonwealth Club of California and the Golden Light Award for the Great Central Valley. The New York Times named the Valley book as one of the eight best photography books of 1993.