Shelly Smithson
JRN 400 Lab
Interview with Brian Johnson
Will Atwater
February 5, 2009


On February 2, 2009, I interviewed Brian K. Johnson, associate head in the department of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.


Please state your name, your age, where you live and your job title.

Johnson: My name is Brian Johnson and I’m 49-years-old. And, presently, I’m the acting department head and I live in Champaign.

Q: How long have you worked here at the university?

Johnson: I’ve been teaching at the university for 20 years…and it’s amazing that it’s been that long—I started in 1998. So, I’ve seen a lot of changes in those years.

Q: What was your life like as a kid growing up?

Johnson: Well, I grew up in Central Wisconsin (Stevens Point). And I was the kind of kid that was always coming up with things I could create and invent. If I was playing with my G.I. Joes I’d take things and turn them into radar dishes … things like that. When I was in my early teen years, my sister had a photo class in high school and my dad had kind of fooled around with photography a little bit … and I thought that was neat—I had always liked photographs. In particular, I always liked old photographs, historic photographs that would show … the general store in 1880 … to see how people lived; what the inside of their houses looked like in 1920. So then, when I was in high school, I took my first photo class. And just really fell in love with it. I had been creative, but what I really liked about photography was that it mixed science with the arts…there is a technical side to it, but there’s a strong creative side to it. I never felt like my dexterity was very good for drawing and painting and things like that. So, photography helped me with that because however I could compose my images, that’s what I could capture.

Q: You were saying that your father played around with photography, was that your first exposure to it?

Johnson: Yeah. I think largely what came to my mind was when my sister had her photo class in high school and she and my dad sort of were able to share that (their interest in photography). And I thought some of the pictures my sister took were pretty interesting. I’d always taken pictures; I’d done some movies when I was a kid. I would do things like, um, (this is going to sound crazy maybe) I’d have plastic model airplanes, and I’d poor gasoline over them and take movies of them as they melted. It was sort of like I was re-enacting the war film, like the plane had crashed … I’d taken pictures on trips and things like that.

Q: Were you using film to shoot your movies?

Johnson: Yeah, it was 8mm film. Then we busted all the way up to super 8 and then we had a video camera … and could record sound as well.

Q: You mentioned your sister, did you grow up in a large or small family?

Johnson: It’s just me and my sister and my sister is 3 years older than I am.

Q: Growing up, who would you say were your role models?

Johnson: I would say my mom and my dad and my grandparents—particularly my grandfather. My grandfather…was born into … an interesting family. His mom and dad divorced when he was fairly young and he ended up going (to live) with his mom. She was a creative person; she wrote songs and did some performing. (My grandfather) grew up fairly poor, but he ended up being a president of a bank. Even though he was a fairly stern man, I just respected him quite a bit. My mom was a working mother. She worked as a speech and language clinician in the public schools. I was really proud of her for doing that. My dad (was) a university professor…he’s retired now. He was a department head…so I always looked up to him too. And actually, I looked up to my sister—we had a pretty close relationship.

Q: You were saying that you took a photo class in high school?

Johnson: Right. It was my sophomore year in high school…My first year in high school, which was my sophomore year, I took a photography course in the art department. My teacher, his name was Warner Halverson, and he was a really interesting, easy-going kind of guy…he was an excellent photographer himself. I think that’s when I really started enjoying photography … working with him.

Q: Was this the point when you began to consider being a photographer as a possible career choice?

Johnson: (It) was when my junior year came about because, um, I was (the) photographer for the yearbook and did some pictures for the student newspaper. Then my senior year, I was editor of the year book. Again (these roles) fell right into place with my love for photographs…I really liked documenting things. But also with the yearbook, those are photos that would go on to (become) the historic photos of the future. So, I think that’s when I started thinking about journalism and photojournalism.

Q: Did your interests in photography influence you choice of colleges?

Johnson: It did to a degree. My sister was going to the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire and they were known to have a very good journalism department. They also had a well respected business department—I wasn’t sure which way I wanted to go. The university, as a whole, had a very good reputation among the state schools. I had been accepted at UW Madison and…I just decided ‘my sisters at Eau Claire and it’s a slightly smaller school …’and I thought that would (be a better fit for me). I … started out as a business major. But then, it seemed that so many of my classmates were interested in partying and getting wasted—superficial things like that. Whereas a lot of classes I had in the humanities, people seemed to care a lot about issues. I think that was what swayed me to say ‘I think journalism is where I need to be.’ I switched to journalism. That was the start, I think, of my junior year of college. I had taken some pictures for the school newspaper and had done some for the yearbook. I became the photo editor of the paper, and then I also, for one semester, served as the design editor.

Q: By then were you pretty much hooked?

Johnson: Yeah, I was definitely hooked. Once I switched into journalism, there was no question for me that I was going to go be a photojournalist and work for a newspaper.

Q: After graduating with a journalism degree, what was your first job?

Johnson: I’m going to take it a half step back. I graduated in four and half years, so in between my spring, which would have been my normal graduation year, and my fall semester, which is when I did graduate, I had an internship at the Racine, Wisconsin Journal Times. I had an excellent internship. They really just put me in as a photojournalist after a couple of weeks, going around with the different photographers. Then I graduated in December of 1981. I went to New York to (visit) my sister because she was living up there. I spent a week or so with her and came back and started looking for jobs. I had two or three job interviews lined up. The first one I had was at the News-Gazette, here in town. For someone starting out in journalism, the News-Gazette at that time had a circulation of 50,000. So that was a nice sized paper to get your first job at. That was March of 1982.

Q: How long did you work at the News Gazette?

Johnson: I (worked) at the News-Gazette for about six and a half years. Because I was here in Champaign-Urbana and I knew I was going to work on my master’s degree, I thought: ‘ok, I’m here, I’m going to work on my master’s degree here at the university.’ I didn’t come to Champaign-Urbana for the university, but because the university was here, it was a convenient way for me to get my degree. What was interesting was that my undergraduate school had quite a number of Illinois graduates, who were my professors. And the program there (UW Eau Claire) was very, very similar to the Illinois program: it was a hands-on journalism program, so the fit was very comfortable for me here. Then in 1988, a friend of mine, who was the photojournalism instructor, was hired to be the publisher at the Illinois Media company, which publishes the Daily Illini. Well, by then, I’d earned my master’s degree, I’d been working close to seven years, and so, I took a visiting appointment here from October until May. I took about a $10,000 pay-cut. I had a union job at the News-Gazette and could have stayed there forever, but I took the chance and I came here. (The university) did a nationwide search and brought in some people who are actually my colleagues now at other universities, and thankfully, I was the one chosen to stay here. And I’ve been here since then.

Q: Who are some of the photographers that you admire?

Johnson: When I was starting out in photojournalism, one of the people I looked up to was Eugene Smith. He was a photographer for Life Magazine. He’d done a number of documentary works and his photographs were just incredible. Then I also had joined the National Press Photographers’ Association, and they have a monthly magazine that comes out. And they always have the award winning photos for that month, so I really immersed myself in all of those photographs. I also liked photographs by Elliott Erwitt. A lot of his photos are really funny and ironic; Diane Arbus has a lot of really interesting photographs of people--people on the fringe of society; Margaret Bourke-White and Dorothea Lange … photographers from the depression era…a range of people from the turn of the last century all the way to current photojournalists.

Q: What are some of the hardest lessons you’ve learned as a photojournalist?

Johnson: Well, I’m also an Eagle Scout, and the Boy Scout motto is ‘be prepared.’ And that is especially true in photojournalism, because if you’re not prepared—in those days did not have enough film with you—you couldn’t be prepared to take the picture when it was going to happen. So, being prepared is certainly one big part of it. Another lesson that I learned is that things happen very quickly, and if you’re not there before things start to happen you might very well miss it. It’s really a part of being prepared: your need to be at places early. I don’t know if this is a hard lesson or not, but (you need) to be sure and confident in your rights as a citizen, especially; and carrying on from that, then, your rights as a journalist. You know a journalist doesn’t have any more rights than a citizen, and many times you had to stand up for your rights to document what was going on. And you had to be willing to try to convince some people that maybe didn’t want you to take the photograph, or you had to learn to deal with irate people; you needed to deal with tragedy sometimes.

Q: Going along with that, are there particular moments that stand out to you?

Johnson: Yeah, there are. There’s one (photograph) that I always think about…when I was not working on a day, I always had my cameras with me. I also had a police radio going, so I knew what was happening…a call came over the police scanner that there had been a shooting … I think they said a shooting at that time…at Curly’s Pond Shop. Well, I was only a block and a half away from there when that call came over. So, you know, I parked my car, I grabbed my stuff and that’s where the preparation came into play because … you develop a routine … load the camera, set your exposure … In those days we didn’t have auto focus cameras; we didn’t really have auto exposure so … I got to the scene and there was the owner of Curly’s Pond Shop, laying on the sidewalk with several bloody spots on his shirt and there’s a policeman over him taking care of him … You know it’s real easy to … you almost go into a state of shock where your vision goes kind of black and white and your heart starts racing. There was a little voice in me that kept saying, ‘focus, focus, focus.’ So I shot pictures of that and I thought I had done a really nice job on that assignment of really covering all angles of it. I had pictures of the policemen in Curly’s Pond Shop looking for things…There are two other stories I’ll tell you. I used to sleep with a police scanner on at night and it was also (a scanner for) fire and police. These calls would come over and you’d kind of wake and listen and try to decide if it was something. So there was an apartment fire … it was 2 a.m. or something … so I pulled on my pants, threw on a shirt and tore off across town to go photograph this. It wasn’t really much of a fire, but the firemen where bringing down this woman and she was just kind of hanging there. She really looked to me like she was dead. I was taking pictures of that—you never know if you’re going to use the body photo or not. Usually not actually—regardless of what people think. When I got back I processed my film and I noticed that on the side of the frame—I didn’t see it when I took the picture—there’s this woman reaching out to the woman who is being carried away, and there’s a fireman kind of holding her back. It really made this dramatic photo. The next day the newspaper sent people over to the complex to identify the (women) and it turns out that they were twin sisters. So, that was just a very, very moving photo, a very moving moment. Thankfully, the woman survived and she was fine, so that just made it a really wonderful moment. The last one I’ll tell you about was one of the last assignments I’d done for the (News)-Gazette. There was a young woman or an old girl—whatever you want to say—on the boys’ University High School soccer team. And I thought ok, ‘how am I going to illustrate that there’s a girl on the boys soccer team?’ So I thought when there’s a free kick…you know how the soccer people always line up and protect their private parts, I thought that would be the moment…because she’s going to have a different set of parts to protect. Sure enough, because I was prepared and I had thought about what I was looking for, I was ready when that actually did happen. It turned out to be a really funny photo, an excellent illustration. And that (photo) ended up winning second place nationally in the sports feature category for the pictures of the year. It was one of those situations where you felt your were at the top of your game; really feeling like you thought out the situation; you were ready for the interesting stuff when it happened and you actually captured it.

Q: I want to switch gears and find out how you feel about the shift from film to digital photography?

Johnson: I have always been very excited about the shift to digital photography. There are a number of photographers who were not happy. One thing when the cameras started becoming more automatic, had auto focus (some photographers) were worried that every one would think that they were a photographer. ‘Everyone will think that they can go out and take photos and we want need photojournalist anymore.’ Well, I didn’t believe that because I knew that it was what was in the photographer’s head, not what was in his hands, that made the difference about getting the picture or not. When digital photography first came onto the market … it was when I first started teaching here (U of I) and we were actually one the first universities in the nation to have a digital dark room. At that time we were sill shooting with film but we had a scanner that would scan negatives. It cost $ 8,000 and we had copies of photo shop when it was still in beta—wasn’t even version one yet. We’ve been a leader in digital technology all the way through. Now, we don’t have a photojournalism major, so it was somewhat unique that we would be a leader in that way, but I knew it was coming, I knew that it was something that we needed to pay attention to. And for that matter, you can do more with your image when you’re working with it digitally than you could with it in the dark room, I felt. The quality has continually gotten better, the cameras have gotten better, and we don’t have to work with hazardous chemicals anymore in the dark room. We’re not pouring silver particles down the drain when we’re done using it…There were a lot of advantages to digital and I’ve been really pretty excited about it from the beginning.

Q: Do you think the department will eventually offer a photojournalism major?

Johnson: I don’t think that will…change as far as having a major. Now what has happened in the past few years is that as the internet has become more prevalent and then the Web came on and now people can easily get their information through Web sites, and also because newspapers aren’t limited anymore by only having a picture on a page … Now they can have video, they can have audio, they can have interactive graphics … Again, we’re a leader in that way. I’ve been teaching multimedia classes here for 15-16 years-- way before we even had an internet. So we want have a photojournalism major, but what has happened is the realization that all journalism majors need to be able to feel comfortable with a still camera, a video camera, and an audio recorder so that they can produce content for which ever medium they happen to be working for. If it’s a video they need to produce…an audio slide show, or if it’s just a story they’re doing …

Q: How have the changes in the newspaper industry affected photojournalists?

Johnson: (The changes) have affected photojournalism in a big way. When digital photography first came on it meant that our deadlines could be changed. So we could stay out shooting pictures longer. When the internet came on and all of a sudden we could shoot video there was really no reason for us not to shoot video. Some photographers got locked into: ‘well, I don’t do video, I’m a still photographer.’ And that’s true, but they needed to then train themselves. Because of that concept, though, many reporters now are seeing the value of being able to shoot video, shoot their on photos … So what we’re really seeing, I think, is journalist that still have their specialties but have a common area in the middle where they feel comfortable with—at least at a basic level—producing a video or an audio story. We’ll still have a photo journalist that specializes in those visual areas, still have the reporter that specializes in the written areas … But there’s this big center area that is actually growing bigger to encompass all those skills so that a journalist can really at least feel comfortable in any one of those areas, but still have a specialty that they concentrate on.

Q: While industry changes seem to have affected print reporters adversely, are there now more opportunities for photojournalists?

Johnson: I think there are because one of the frustrating things about being a photojournalist was always being limited to only being seen as the photographer and always not to be seen as the journalist. And what I loved in particular about this convergence as it’s called is that it has put the photojournalist in a more central role so that (he or she) can now be the journalist telling the story; photographing the situations, but also doing video and audio. So what I’ve love about it is that it really lets you tell a full story in a way that you’ve never been able to do before. And the funny thing is, even for many reporters, (is that) they embraced this technology well. So I think for some reporters they see it as a real growth area … because they can tell the whole story.

Q: What advice would you offer journalism students who are interested in pursuing a career in photojournalism?

Johnson: What I tell all my students is to not have your blinders on. Don’t see yourself as only a one medium journalist. Don’t say, ‘well I’m a print journalist’, or ‘I’m a TV journalist,’ or ‘I’m a photojournalist.’ You have to see yourself as a journalist first and then use what ever tools are appropriate for that story. So, the advice I give is to be very open to learning the tools of your trade, whether they’re intellectual tools, whether they’re physical tools, so that you’re prepared to cover a story in whatever way you think it will be best told.