Positive Negatives: The Photography of David Johnson

Date: Thursday, November 3rd, 7:30

Price:: $12 for general public, $8 for Little Theatre members, Genesee Center members, or students with valid ID. Tickets are available in advance at The Little Theatre box office, at Genesee Center for the Arts, or the day of the event.

Location: The Little Theatre, 240 East Avenue - Rochester, NY

Film screening followed by a talk back with David Johnson. Positive Negatives is a 30 minute documentary by filmmaker Mindy Steiner.

Positive Negatives Film Screening with Talkback

The Photography of David Johnson Exhibit Opening Reception

Date: Friday, November 4th, 7-9pm:

Location: Community Darkroom Galleries at Genesee Center for the Arts & Education, 713 Monroe Ave. - Rochester, NY

View the work and meet the photographer. With music by Paradigm Shift.

About David Johnson:

David Johnson, now 84 years old, fell in love with photography at age 12. He happened to win a small camera in a contest and began snapping photos. After a stint in the navy, he decided to study photography and while browsing through Popular Photography, he saw a small article that Ansel Adams was setting up a photography department at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco (now the SF Art Institute). He wrote to Adams and was accepted into the program.

Mr. Johnson lived in Ansels house in the beginning and worked in his darkroom. Eventually he moved out and rented a room in the Fillmore which is where he began meeting the early leadership of African-Americans emerging in the city.

Ansel Adams told his students to photograph what they knew. For Mr. Johnson, this meant documenting life on the streets and in the clubs of the Fillmore district. In 1947, Mr. Johnson became a staff reporter for the emerging Sun-Reporter.

After working for the newspaper and opening a small studio, Mr. Johnson continued to document the social, political and private lives of African-Americans living in the Fillmore District - the jazz clubs, street scenes, the civil rights movement in San Francisco, and the neighborhood changes - always with an eye for depicting people positively, with dignity and respect.

Today, Mr. Johnson sees himself as a griot, a West African word describing a tribal elder whose role is to pass on the stories and wisdom of the past.

I have the good fortune of seeing tremendous change in the world. My peers are passing, but a new generation is rising up. It is a great moment to be alive and pass on the history I have experienced.

His work has been featured in galleries, books such as Harlem of the West and The Golden Decade, and PBS documentaries. Several of his prints are included in the Library of Congress and his name is etched in concrete at the Fillmore Plaza in San Francisco.

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