About

Also invisibility, compassion, sunscreen and outrage. Recently awarded a National Geographic fellowship, Johnson is known for shooting elusive subjects—language, disease, rape, water—and for asking tough questions. Her thesis as a Knight Fellow at Ohio University probed hate crimes; at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications she challenged master’s students to push past their own comfort levels. Dedicated to exploring the far reaches of the human condition, she spends maybe two months a year at home in Pittsburgh, packing that camera bag over and over. (Photo by Annie O’Neill)

Clients

• National Geographic Magazine

• National Geographic Photo Camps

• Ripple Effect Images

• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

• Geo magazine

• Sports Illustrated

• LIFE magazine

• Finalist for Pulitzer for Feature Photography, National Geographic Magazine’s Katie’s New Face: The Story of the youngest face transplant patient issue, 2019

• National Geographic Explorer Fellowship

• Finalist for Pulitzer for Explanatory Reporting, National Geographic Magazine’s Gender Revolution issue, 2017

• Gold Medal, Video/Photography, Gender Revolution, Society for Publication Designers

• National Geographic Photographers Photographer Award, Recognition for one who has most advanced the possibilities of our medium

• The Open Society Institute Documentary Photography Grant for Hate Kills

• The Heinz Foundation grants for environmental photography projects

• Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Coverage of the Disadvantaged

• Pictures of the Year International, University of Missouri School of Journalism

• National Geographic Explorer Fellowship

• World Press Awards

• Photographers on Photography: Lynn Johnson on the Heroic Nature of Humanity,
  a series of interviews for National Geographic Magazine’s 125th Anniversary

• Ripple Effect Images, State of Grace

Interviews with National Geographic Magazine’s Blog, PROOF

• Looking Death in the Face—and Finding a Blurry Line

• With Cameras as a Bridge, Young Colombian Refugees Tell Their Stories

• A Photographer Addicted to Telling the Story of Marijuana

• A New Kind of Explorer: The Photography Fellows

• On Being a Woman Photographer With Maggie Steber and Lynn Johnson

• 8 Photos That Inspired Action

• Pictures We Love: Seeing Science

• Seven Nat Geo Photographers on Witnessing Climate Change

• This Secret Police Archive Holds Clues to Terrible Crimes

• Water Warriors, Calabria Italy

• National Geographic’s Women of Vision traveling exhibition

• Bluocean, Water Warriors, House of Memory commission, Milan, Italy.
  Casa della Memoria is dedicated to making known the great injustices of humanity

• Exhibit at Leica Gallery, Los Angeles

• Visa pour l’image, Perpignan, France

Annenberg Space for Photography group exhibits:

• Refugee

• The Power of Photography: National Geographic 125 Years   

• No Strangers: Ancient Wisdom in a Modern World

• National Geographic: Water: Our Thirsty World

• Sport

• Women of Vision: National Geographic’s Female Photographers  2013

• Through the Lens: National Geographic Greatest Photographs 2003

• Edward Curtis: Coming to Light 2002

• John Muir: Nature’s Visionary 2001

• Nature’s Medicines: Plants that Heal 2000

• Women Photographers at National Geographic 2000

• Women in the Material World 1996

• Power to Heal 1990

• Men’s Lives 1984