In the Gallery

This exhibition is the first installment of Stephen Johnson’s new Life Form work made during the last four years. The exhibition opened at the Viewpoint Art Center in Sacramento in March 2018, continuing to its current venue at Stephen Johnson Photography Gallery at the Pacifica Center for the Arts in Pacifica, CA. This showing opened on July 21, 2018 and will be on display indefinitely.

My fascination with sensual organic form knows no limits. The natural beauty that drew me to photography is most profoundly manifested by the very sensuality of natural form itself. It's beauty is deeply emotional, bound up in the basic instinct and desires of our humanness. Finding such form in the real world has been my career. This work concentrates that intrigue on the wonderful and strange form found in plant life. Closely examined, these seemingly familiar, fellow creatures of this planet, become profoundly compellingly, strange, almost alien and irresistible to explore with care, deep focus, sensitively and without embellishment.

Life Form Online Gallery.
The Press can email for publicity photos. Press Release July 6, 2018

Genesis of this Work

The Life Form Series has grown from my lifelong fascination with organic form and design. Not only have I found solace in the natural world for all of my adult life, but my respect for all living things has profoundly effected how I’ve lived my life.

Introduction

Stephen Johnson’s Life Form Exhibition at the Viewpoint: A Review

Today we live in a world where photography is digital, the product of the ubiquitous cell phone camera. It is perhaps fortunate, given that this is “Photography Month Sacramento,” that we are treated to an exhibit that allows us to see what this technology makes possible. The photography of Stephen Johnson, at the Viewpoint Gallery in Sacramento, allows us to realize a view of our environment where we do not live in the Kodachrome world many photographic artists embrace. Johnson’s intimate explorations in this exhibition titled Life Form depict the organic forms to be found in flowers and other flora.  

Although Life Form marks a departure from his much praised grand landscapes, Johnson maintains a high ethic that only someone with a total understanding of digital photographic technology can achieve. By mastering techniques known as focus stacking and obsessive color management, and joining them in marriage with his unique vision and respect for the natural world, Stephen Johnson’s Life Form exposes the often-ignored subtleties in his themes. These are large prints depicting small subjects and yet they retain, in exquisite detail, the structures to be found therein. It is hard not to find oneself drawn into this world that we are surrounded by yet seldom see.

Gabriel Unda. Fellow, BioCommunications Association.

Life Form Online Gallery. Invitation pdf.

Location

Stephen Johnson Photography. Pacifica Center for the Arts

1220 Linda Mar Blvd. Pacifica, CA 94044

(650) 355-7507

Project photographs made with Canon cameras. Prints are being made on the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-4000 using the Hahnemühle Museum Etching paper which Steve designed with Hahnemühle.

Stephen Johnson Photography Gallery Directions

Stephen Johnson Photography at the Pacifica Center for the Arts
Studio Map Link

Early work partially sponsored by Canon and Hahnemühle.