Joe Johnson’s works are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, The Center for Creative Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, New York Artist Book Library and the University of Macau, among others. His photographs have been the subject of articles and reviews in Art in America, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Wired Magazine Raw File, Esquire Magazine Russia, and YVI Magazine in the Netherlands. His recent book Office Hours with Joe Johnson was exhibited as a first book prize shortlist honoree by the Aperture Foundation at Paris Photo. He holds an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. The recipient of Center Santa Fe’s Callanan Excellence in Teaching Award, Johnson currently teaches at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
The photographs in Sometimes Always Never (2020-2024) were made since the pandemic and often with my young twin boys in tow. After a career engaging in highly circumscribed project-oriented work, I left the tripod and my formal rubric at home. Instead, I favored the small hand camera and black and white film of my early education, making “notes” wherever I happened to be without expectation. Aside from the turmoil of our common predicament, I set about the task of keeping up a highly local art practice during lockdown in between matters that seemed more pressing. I imagined all visible things to be inflected by the current moment, divulging previously withheld significance…subjects that are known but in a way that felt less secure. The title is paternal, referencing a convention my father taught me to properly fasten a three-button suit jacket. The title is also comprised of three honest answers I might have given at the time when asked, “Are you making new work?” Sometimes, Always, Never.