Photographer David Johnson, who chronicled San Francisco's Black culture, dies at 97
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Photographer and civil rights activist David Johnson died at his home in Greenbrae, north of San Francisco, earlier this month. He was 97 years old. Johnson was the first Black student of the famous nature photographer Ansel Adams and became known as one of the foremost chroniclers of San Francisco's Black urban culture. NPR's Chloe Veltman has this remembrance.
CHLOE VELTMAN, BYLINE: David Johnson wasn't interested in taking posed pictures.
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DAVID JOHNSON: A big, smiling photograph. That wasn't my style.
VELTMAN: In a 2018 interview at the University of California Berkeley, Johnson explained how he took one of his most famous photographs.
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JOHNSON: That particular day, I decided to just walk out and see what I could see.
VELTMAN: The bustling scene from 1946 depicts a street corner in San Francisco's Fillmore District, once a hub for the city's thriving Black community until redevelopment later in the century forced nearly all of its members out. The image has stark contrasts of light and shadow, and it's shot from above. Johnson clambered up four stories on a nearby construction scaffold to get it.
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JOHNSON: I focused my camera and took one photograph. I was kind of anxious to get this little job over with and go back down to the ground.
VELTMAN: Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Fla., to an impoverished single mother who handed her baby off to be raised by a cousin. In a 2013 interview with San Francisco member station KQED, Johnson said he got his first camera by selling magazine subscriptions door to door.
JOHNSON: It was equivalent to what might call a box brownie. And I just started snapping pictures around the neighborhood, and I got kind of fascinated with that.
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ANSEL ADAMS: Technique is simply a means of bringing about in the print the image as visualized by the artist before he operates his shutter.
VELTMAN: In archival footage from the Getty Museum, Ansel Adams describes his technique for capturing the awe-inspiring images of Yosemite and other natural wonders that made him famous. Budding photographers were clamoring to get into the program he launched at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco in 1946. Johnson had just returned from serving in the U.S. Navy in the Philippines and wanted in.
JOHNSON: I wrote to Ansel and said, I'm interested in studying photography. I have the GI Bill. And I would like for you to evaluate my letter. Ansel wrote me back and said, there are no vacancies in the class.
VELTMAN: But a student dropped out, making room for Johnson. He hopped on a segregated train that took him from Jacksonville to San Francisco, where he eventually found a low-rent room in the Fillmore District and started taking lots of photos.
CHRISTINE HULT-LEWIS: He would just go to the clubs in the evenings, take incredible photographs of musicians.
VELTMAN: Christine Hult-Lewis is the pictorial curator of special collections at UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library, which houses the David Johnson archives.
HULT-LEWIS: He had very easy relationships, I believe, with people in the barbershops and the folks in the churches and folks on the streets.
VELTMAN: Hult-Lewis said as a freelance press photographer, Johnson took candid photos of Black celebrities who came to town, such as Nat King Cole, Paul Robeson and Langston Hughes. He also used his camera to spark conversations about civil rights.
HULT-LEWIS: There's another incredible photograph of a young, African American boy sitting, holding an American flag in the embrace of a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln.
VELTMAN: Johnson never became a big name like his teacher, Ansel Adams. But as his wife, Jacqueline Sue, told KQED in 2013, interest in Johnson's work has grown as cities across the country grapple with the negative impacts of urban redevelopment.
JACQUELINE SUE: The photographs tell life - life as it was then, life that cannot be duplicated or recreated today.
VELTMAN: She says David Johnson's photographs are a marker of history. Chloe Veltman, NPR News.
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