Pictures help people to understand and appreciate others, a noted Black photographer said in a recent visit to San Quentin State Prison.
David Johnson said his black and white photos of San Francisco kids playing hop-scotch or young people dancing the night away not only portray the beauty of his medium, but were “designed to enlighten the world about the beauty of our people.”
The beauty of his medium also entails a powerful message: a racially segregated Black and White America. He grew up in the “very segregated South,” where “the life of the Black man was fields and chain gangs,” Johnson said in a Feb. 17 interview.
He spent most of his teenage years in Jacksonville, Fla.
At the age of 6, he witnessed a woman’s murder and his parents were imprisoned for the killing. Another trauma was learning they were not his biological parents.
One day while working for the local grocer, Johnson saw a magazine ad offering a free camera to anyone who sold a certain number of subscriptions. He won the camera and has been looking through a lens ever since.
Seeing little chance for his future in the South, he moved to California and attended the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, class of `46, becoming the first Black student of the late Ansel Adams, a giant in the history of photography.
Johnson’s wife, journalist Jacqueline Annette Sue, wrote the book about his life, titled “A Dream Begun So Long Ago,” which contains many of the photographs from his long career. Summarizing his philosophy, he said, “Dreams are not made of proper words, but of images.”
It tells the story of Johnson growing up in the Great Depression, serving in the Navy during World War II and pursuing a career of photographing images of “how it was,” in the streets of San Francisco in the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s.
This was Johnson’s second visit to San Quentin. His first visit was 20 years ago, when he attempted to help a former prisoner after meeting him at a church service. That ended badly, with the man going back to prison.
At one point he pulled out a sheet of paper with some of his thoughts, including:
“You learn to build all your roads on today, because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans…
“Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers, you learn that you really can endure, that you are really strong, and you really do have worth.”
David Johnson’s photography book is available locally at Barnes and Noble, The Depot, Mill Valley or from www.davidsjohnsonphotography.com