David Johnson is a lens-based artist, educator, and curator. He received his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and BFA from Texas Christian University. His photographs have been exhibited internationally, in venues that include the Contemporary Art Museum in Saint Louis, the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., Rathaus in Stuttgart, Germany, and Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio. In 2019, Johnson’s first book, Wig Heavier Than a Boot, a collaborative project with poet Philip Matthews, was published by Kris Graves Projects; the following year it was featured at the Fotofest Biennial in Houston. In 2021, the University of Texas Press published Johnson’s second book, It Can Be This Way Always: Images from the Kerrville Folk Festival.
Philip Matthews is a poet from eastern North Carolina. He is the author of Witch (Alice James Books, 2020) and Wig Heavier Than A Boot (Kris Graves Projects, 2019), a collaboration with photographer David Johnson. Poems have recently appeared in Poetry Northwest, Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and Winter Tangerine.
Anchored by site-specific meditation and performance, his practice investigates spiritual, queer power, questions of home, and ecological shift. Philip is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Fine Arts Work Center iin Provincetown, the Peaked Hill Trust, Hemera Foundation, and Wormfarm Institute.
