Compelling documentary work demands a photographer's strong connection with his or her subject. In this course, Stella teaches students how to make that connection and develop a personal style of shooting. She works individually with photographers to help them determine and define their interests and ideas.
The work of photographer Stella Johnson has spanned editorial assignments, corporate projects, documentaries and personal artistic expressions. Stella has worked extensively in both the U.S. and overseas with commissions from the Ford Foundation, Earthwatch Institute and Continental Airlines and assignments from Time, Fortune and US News and World Report.
She received two Fulbright Scholarships to Mexico in 2003- 2004, and 2006, the former for photography and the latter for teaching. Her personal work has been recognized by a cultural collaborative artist-in-residence grant, a grant from the International Music and Art Foundation and has been exhibited in dozens of shows in the U.S. and Mexico, including the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee Wisconsin, the Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, FLA, the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA and Blue Sky Gallery, Portland Oregon.
Stella teaches at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University and Boston University and was a visiting scholar at the school of Visual Arts at Northeastern University in 2006.
Her book, AL SOL: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM MEXICO, CAMEROON AND NICARAGUA, is published by the University of Maine Press with exhibitions at the Hallmark Museum of Contemporary Photography and the University of Maine Museum of Art in 2008.
Stella has been the recipient of the recipient of the selected following awards: first place, documentary, 2010 Julia Margaret Cameron Award; third place, Danforth Museum of Art’s Off the Wall, curated by Helen Molesworth of the ICA Boston and Jen Mergel of the MFA, Boston; finalist, 2009 the Julia Margaret Cameron Award; 2nd place singles, Lens Culture International Exposure Award; Silver Award B&W Magazine Singe Image; Top 50 Critical Mass Photolucida 2006; Women in Photography in Photography International Competition HM; B&W Magazine Portfolio Spotlight.
