Patterns and Distractions: Photography by Russell Johnson
I have always been distracted by patterns, shapes, patches of light and shadow, whether they tell a story, beg a question or simply bring me pleasure, whether they are created by humans or nature.
PATTERNS and DISTRACTIONS is available here or on Amazon.
It started when I was a studio art minor at the University of Minnesota in the 60s. My professors included legendary photographers Jerome Liebling and Nathan Lyons. One assignment was to shoot textures and patterns. I wandered the streets that winter discovering tires that looked like frosted doughnuts, the peeling faces of movie stars on an abandoned billboard, and, during the Vietnam war, broken doll bodies and war toys in a thrift shop.
Since then my various projects have taken me to some sixty countries, where I indulged in capturing new patterns and distractions that caught my eye, from a lava field in Hawaii, an umbrella stand in Palm Springs, frogs in Brazil and fishing nets in India, to he air intake of an old Soviet MIG fighter plane.
PATTERNS and DISTRACTIONS features 55 of those images.
