This work on the viaduct is something that I have been wanting to photograph, or document, ever since I knew that they were going to take it down. I had one foot in architecture and one foot in that performative realm-almost like a portrait made through the things I found interesting. Whether or not it was these mushroom camp forager structures that I photographed, or this seasonal hunting camp in Alaska where each cabin was built out of different salvaged materials. That’s when I honed in on this new vocabulary that I started finding in the landscape. SH: Everything in Borderlands is found, right?ĮJ: Yes. I tried ham-handedly to create performative gestures myself in those spaces, but the more I looked, the weirder, stranger things I found, and then my work kind of shifted to that aspect. There were many in-between places-where things were caught by natural forces or human forces and people messing with them. At that time in San Francisco, it was a city that was on the verge of becoming what it is now, but not quite there yet. All the projects in our show focus, in one way or another, on people doing what they can with what they have.ĮJ: When I was working on Borderlands, those were ideas I was really interested in, and have continued in a lot of the work that I do-the makeshift or adaptation, improvisation with what you find. As a part of it, we have an exhibition at the Graham Foundation that features global design practices. SH: This edition of the biennial, The Available City, curated by David Brown, is dispersed throughout Chicago neighborhoods. I saw the Chicago Architecture Biennial just opened, and I’m into the theme of making use of spaces that need use or could be of use. I bought it at a Museum of Contemporary Photography auction when I first moved to Chicago in 2006.ĮJ: Oh, that is really sweet. (Herda points to a photo on the wall behind her, “Untitled (Sweater)” from Johnson’s early 2000s project “Borderlands”). The following article was published in Issue 39.1: Refraction. Sarah Herda in conversation with photographer Eirik JohnsonĪ discussion of Johnson’s latest project documenting the demolition of the Alaskan Way Viaduct.Īll photos by Eirik Johnson as featured in his latest book, Road to Nowhere.
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