Joanna Johnston

Overview
View works. Joanna Johnston, Don't Fall
Don't Fall
View works

Artist Joanna Johnston distills her architect’s eye and painter’s heart into luminous in-camera double-exposures that blur the line between built geometry and the pulse of the natural world.

 

Johnston works solely within the camera—eschewing Photoshop—to capture two exposures taken seconds apart, then fuses them into a single frame that reads like a photographic palimpsest. Interlocking façades float across wind-shaken foliage; curtain-walls dissolve into cloud, suggesting space as layered, subjective, and alive. Printed at an immersive scale and on Hahnemühle fine art paper, her limited-edition pieces envelop viewers in shimmering planes of light, revealing hidden textures and colour gradations that surface only at human height. Each composition becomes both map and memory: a meditative collision of structure and sensation where time compresses, depth reforms, and perception is invited to wander. In Johnston’s hands, photography transcends documentation—becoming a tactile, prismatic invitation to inhabit the fleeting constructions of place, feeling, and imagination.

Works
  • Joanna Johnston, A Whisper
    A Whisper$CAD 6,500.00
  • Joanna Johnston, The Rushing
    The Rushing$CAD 6,500.00
  • Joanna Johnston, The Hedges
    The Hedges$CAD 6,500.00
  • Joanna Johnston, The Tenderness
    The Tenderness$CAD 6,500.00
  • Joanna Johnston, The Dying
    The Dying$CAD 6,500.00
  • Joanna Johnston, The Millions
    The Millions$CAD 6,045.00
  • Joanna Johnston, The Shadows
    The Shadows$CAD 6,045.00
  • Joanna Johnston, The Opening
    The Opening$CAD 5,850.00
  • Joanna Johnston, The Smallest Cracks
    The Smallest Cracks$CAD 5,200.00
  • Joanna Johnston, You Don't Have To Be Good
    You Don't Have To Be Good$CAD 5,200.00
  • Joanna Johnston, Don't Fall
    Don't Fall$CAD 5,200.00
  • Joanna Johnston, Lost
    Lost$CAD 5,200.00
  • Joanna Johnston, In Between
    In Between$CAD 4,322.00
  • Joanna Johnston, The Footsteps
    The Footsteps$CAD 3,900.00
  • Joanna Johnston, Be Still
    Be Still$CAD 3,900.00
  • Joanna Johnston, The Forest
    The Forest$CAD 3,900.00
  • Joanna Johnston, The Fairytales
    The Fairytales$CAD 3,900.00
  • Joanna Johnston, Of Joy
    Of Joy$CAD 3,900.00
  • Joanna Johnston, The Opening
    The Opening$CAD 3,500.00
Biography
View works. Joanna Johnston, Don't Fall
Don't Fall
View works

Joanna Johnston was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1973. She came to her photography practice after working for 10 years as an architect. For her, architecture is integral to how we feel and to the broader human experience. It conveys messages to our senses even if we are not consciously aware of the impacts. As a child, she stood at the edge of her father’s drafting table, enthralled, as he created space for people to live in, to feel and experience life. This taught her the underlying principle that spaces communicate. If our buildings cut us off from nature, we are depleted spiritually. If they connect us, we are enriched and satiated.

Joanna’s life has been shaped by three major events. The first was winning a research prize to study exemplary hospital design in Europe which prompted her to leave architecture. This study inspired her first public photography exhibition, where she explored the effect that space has on mental health patients. The final event was uprooting and leaving Toronto for Europe for 8 years, where she was fully immersed in her photographic practice. This cultural shift pushed her projects in new directions with the framework of inquiry remaining the same. Architecture has the power to negotiate our relationship to nature and ourselves. Exploring this relationship and its effect on us, is at the heart of her work.

CV