Collection: Eirik Johnson

Sawdust Mountain

When I was young, my family would hunt for mushrooms in the forests of the Cascade and Olympic Mountains. Some days we would spend afternoons along the shallows of a river watching salmon fight their way to spawning grounds upstream. These were the icons of the region: forest and salmon, pillars of Northwest identity. These photographs address the complicated relationship between the region’s landscape, the industries that rely upon natural resources, and the communities they support.  Sawdust Mountain is a melancholy love letter of sorts, a personal reflection on the region's past, its hardscrabble identity, and the turbulent future it must navigate.

 

BIO

Photographic artist Eirik Johnson (b. 1974, Seattle) makes conceptually grounded work examining the intersections of contemporary environmental, social, and economic issues both in America and abroad.  Employing various modes of presentation from photobooks to experiential photo and sound-based installation, Johnson’s photographic projects explore the marks and connections formed in the friction of this complicated relationship. Johnson received his BFA and BA from the University of Washington, Seattle, WA and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.  He has exhibited his work at institutions including the Aperture Foundation, NY, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston MA, and the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA.  His monographs include Road to Nowhere (self-published), Barrow Cabins (Ice Fog Press), PINE (Minor Matters Books), Sawdust Mountain (Aperture Books), and BORDERLANDS (Twin Palms Publishers). Johnson’s work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, NY, and the Nevada Art Museum, Reno, NV.  His editorial clients include Travel+Leisure, New York Times Magazine, Dwell, and Metropolis. He is a member of the international photographer’s cooperative Piece of Cake Collective and serves as Programs Chair at the Photographic Center Northwest.