James Johnson brings real-world knowledge to his classroom as a professional photographer for 30 years. He joined Moore College of Art & Design as a full-time photography professor in 2006, when he learned about Moore’s inclusive learning environment and unique mission as a historically women’s college. As the new head of the College’s Foundation program for all first-year students, Johnson finds ways to bring different artistic disciplines together.
Read on to learn more about James!
What’s your earliest memory of being creative or knowing that you wanted to do something creative with your life?
I took a graphic arts class in high school. It was in the bus garage, and it had a darkroom and an offset press. We did things like screen printing, and we also had a two-week photography section. I thought to myself, What is this magic? It was just so amazing. We were developing film and printing in the dark room. I was hooked from the start.
When I went to college, I initially majored in advertising and graphic design. I switched to photography in my second year because I wanted to create art. I also had professors who were really interesting people. They were painting professors, but they took us on study abroad trips to places like Paris and Florence. We got to see all these incredible paintings, and they talked to us about them and the lives of the artists in these places. Those were mind-blowing experiences for me. I ended up double majoring in graphic design and photography and going to graduate school for photography.
Who is the artist or designer who has influenced you most and why?
I have a wall of inspiration at my house where I put prints of images. I have two images I keep coming back to. One is an assemblage by Louise Nevelson I saw in a show at Pace Gallery in New York City. That really stuck with me.
I have another painting by Kerry James Marshall which is made with black paint. It’s all black tones and dark grays, and from a distance, it just looks like a black rectangle. When you get up close, you see all this variation and tonality in the shadow areas. As a photographer, shadow areas are so important. Those are two artists I’ve been spending a lot of time with recently.
What’s the most interesting thing you’ve done recently, professionally or otherwise?
I did a residency in Sicily last summer. I spent a month on the Tyrrhenian Sea on the north coast between Palermo and Messina. I would just wander around and take photos, and it also gave me a lot of time to delve into my archives. I started making photo-based assemblages—I would put rocks and flowers on my photo prints and photograph them again so I could mess around with pictorial space.
I practice photography, but I always have these non-photographic aspects to my work. I put analog matter into my work, and sometimes I create work that’s not photography at all. Having those aspects of my practice allows me to think more broadly about things other than photography. Those are the things I was thinking about a lot when I was preparing to start as as head of the Foundation program.
I have a lot of ideas about working with objects, space and temporality. I want to connect things to each other. That’s what I’m excited about, and it’s some of the knowledge I can bring, as a lens-based practitioner, to a Foundation program that’s trying to prepare students for many art and design disciplines. Even the burgeoning media art represented by the Film & Digital Cinema and Animation & Game Arts majors is something I’m thinking about as I step into this role.
What is it like in your classroom at Moore?
The first two years are mostly about skill-building. There are more technical demonstrations and lectures with artists meant to impart information to students in those classes.
Once they get into their junior and senior years, I open it up. I give students a lot of autonomy to determine what they’re making work about, what they’re making it out of, whether they’re making videos or photos, etc. I really enjoy those classes because it’s more one-on-one conversations where I’m cultivating specific ideas with individual artists. It’s more work in some ways, but it’s much more rewarding.
I try to have an ongoing conversation with students throughout the semester. It’s an attempt to help them develop a well-thought-out, mature body of work so they can do amazing things when they leave Moore. I think that’s the importance of autonomy—it helps students figure out how to make tough decisions. It helps them identify what they’re passionate about or care deeply about.
If Moore had a mascot, what would it be?
When former University of the Arts student Zivia Brown ’25 enrolled at Moore, she brought a metal goat sculpture she made at UArts to the College. In honor of the new sculpture, I think a goat should be Moore’s mascot!
Moore College of Art & Design is the only independent art and design college in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Want to learn more about our Photography major or Foundation year? Contact our Admissions team at enroll@moore.edu or 215.965.4015 to set up a call or a campus visit. We’d love to tell you more!
