Daniel N. Johnson / Issue Zerø ALT

April 2014 | Issue Zerø

A friend of mine sends out a monthly music mix to all his friends; for the people he loves all scattered around the globe it’s an invitation to collectively experience the current soundtrack of his life.

My abilities skew more visual but that influenced me to put together something to send on a regular basis to my friends and the people who find inspiration from my work.

And thus you have the collection of images, thoughts, and inspirations that follows...

Eden, 2013

Another dear friend is currently on a three-month quest to discover what’s next for her after leaving her previous job.

As part of that process she’s having coffee with fifty people, while documenting the experience and the morsels of life/love/work advice they have to give.

She’s not sure where the project will lead, but like her, I’m leaving room for whatever this could evolve into.

Picasso said “I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.”

Here’s to whatever that “else” might happen to be.

Montauk, 2013

Places visited in this issue:

Eden, UT Montauk, NY Oahu, HI Los Angeles, CA Joshua Tree, CA Big Sur, CA Santa Barbara, CA New York, NY Las Gaviotas, Mexico Hollister, MO Miami, FL Current location:

Eden, UT

In May of 2013, I moved to Los Angeles The goal was to make a definitive break from my life as a freelance motion designer in NYC and to focus instead, for a period of time, exclusively on my art and photography.

Since the age of 19 my main source of income and creative output has been as a designer, be it in print, web or motion graphics. Despite broacasting mostly only my photography online the past couple years, 90% of my creative energies were still spent in the world of the former.

Design had been a fulfilling career path, and had funded so many beautiful life experiences (including my initial forays into photography,) but the fourteen-hour days in front of a computer weren’t making me feel as alive as being actively out interacting with people and the world via a camera.

Nor did the long-ingrained mentality that acompanied my increasingly myopic process of only gathering inspiration via (and creating for) the window of the computer screen serve me any longer - I wanted to think less like a designer, and more like an artist.

To me, design as graphic communication, is about providing answers.

Art to me is about asking questions.

Mentally, it was a transition I’d been attempting to make the year prior.

But it was time for a physical shift.

Now, I heart New York, but it had become synonymous with my creative identity as designer and remaining there only reinforced that. So I gave myself three months to see if such a transition were possible, and decide if it was even a path I wanted to take.

LA was to be a warm incubator for this potential rebirth. To establish new patterns and routines. To meet new people. To ask new questions.

By the end of the summer I’d spent more time viewing the world through a lens than a screen. While it wasn’t clear whether I’d succeeded as a photographer or not, those three months altered how I found inspiration… and perhaps more importantly, how I perceive myself as someone who creates; an artist whose current tool is the camera.

Geographic change is often beneficial to enable paradigm shift.

I still heart New York, but for now, I’m in LA trying to ask questions.

And LA is waaaay more convenient for shooting underwater.

Rebirth July 2013

This series is, for me, quite symbolic of my artistic transition last year.

Metapattern August 2013

Mari and Carson form a soon-to-be-wed life and work duo called Metapattern.

A beautifully juxtaposed pair of already stellar individuals, they both brim with curiosity and an intelligence as much of the heart as of the mind.

If you’re looking for fellow travelers on the creative/ spiritual/life journey, Mari and Carson are the people you want accompanying you.

I met them only last summer, but these two have been invaluable to my own artistic journey over the past year.

“Imperfection is what resonates.”

- Carson Linforth-Bowley

Joshua Tree September 2013

In September of 2013 I accompanied some friends to scout locations for a luxury nomadic camping experience they were developing. We set up a dome on a plot of land just at the outskirts of Joshua Tree.

I took advantage of a couple hours of the solitude, an incredibly bright almost-full moon, and an extraterrestrial landscape to get a little primal for some strange long exposure self-portraits late into the warm desert night.

Some People I know March 2013 - January 2014

Tawney 2014

Sheida 2013

Lindsay 2014

Allison 2014

Yves 2014

BBB 2013

Erin 2013

Sekombi Los Angeles, 2013

Sekombi is the man.

He founded and runs the Mutaani radio station and music label in Goma, DR Congo.

He’s smart, fiercely charismatic and doing beautiful things in an area of the world known more for its suffering than for its vitality.

Sekombi joyfully embodies the latter.

And he dances better than you could ever even dream of doing.

Hanna Leess August 2013

Last summer I lived in a beautiful compound in Venice, CA with a revolving cast of intriguing nomadic souls. One of those happened to be Hanna, a true artist if I’ve ever met one.

A folk singer-songwriter with a distinctive and vulnerable voice that ranges somewhere between that of a more sophisticated CocoRosie and a more pleasing Joanna Newsom.

She currently lives and creates in Berlin Check out her music.

www.hannaleess.bandcamp.com

Michael Dumler Venice, CA

Michael, or “Marlboro Man” as we call him due to his deep, raspy voice, is a streetstyle photographer, and another one of the large cast of characters I met last summer.

He’s one of the hardest working photographers I know, constantly with camera in hand, or shoulder bag.

He’s also reinvented himself several times over. He first picked up a camera only two years ago and that has since become his full vocation; proving that no career choice or life path need be permanent.

Check his site here. www.onabbotkinney.com

Handle Only With Love September 2013

Tini Courtney is an artist and entrepreneur. As founder of her jewelry company H.O.WL. (Handle Only With Love) she’s one of the most prolific human beings I currently know. I wish I had half the productivity she has in just her left hand alone.

We first met on a sunset ocean swim in late July where I happened to have my underwater housing with me.

An eventual collaboration was inevitable.

www.handleonlywithlove.com

Cherie Leena Malibu, CA

Tawney Venice, CA

Tawney became my unofficial underwater muse last summer.

I probably half-drowned her at least a half-dozen times.

A fellow nomadic soul, she runs a website called Live Like You’re on Vacation and is an inspiration to me in how she embodies that pursuit of making travel-consciousness a part of every her day life.

David October 2013

David Lewis is possibly the most genuine and most intelligent person I count among my close friends. He’s also the most deserving of an abstract series of portraits.

Not to mention he has the highest vertical leap of anyone this side of the NBA. He turned 30 in October and a baker’s dozen of his friends went to Las Gaviotas, Mexico (on the Baja coast) for a weekend to celebrate and surf.

The waves were small but the fish tacos cheap.

Miami December, 2013

On December 10th, 2013, I turned 33.

I was in Miami for Art Basel the week prior, getting my ass both kicked and inspired by the brilliant work of artists exhibiting there.

My take-away of what separated my work (or lack thereof ) from theirs was that of doing.

Rather than attempting to figure everything out at a cerebral level before commencing (which, as a mentality ingrained from my years as a designer, has impeded my artistic output,) both what they had to say and how they “said� it was defined and refined simply by doing.

Over and over.

That and the courage to fail again and again to finally create what they needed to create.

This may seem like the most blatantly obtuse observation, I mean come on, I already knew all that. But whether revelation or simply a reminder, it was practically epiphanous to me at the time.

I’ve spent a large part of my life paralyzed by the prospect of failure, especially when it comes to matters of creation; afraid to undertake an endeavor without guarantee of success, reinforced by a lazy perfectionism, and the perceived need to figure everything prior to doing anything.

Enroute to the airport that morning, I decided to stop for a quick birthday swim, (despite playing it dangerously close to missing my flight.)

The second word that the salty waves delivered that day?

As I dove into the waves (in a cheesy symbolic embrace of the upcoming year,) immediately the ocean slapped me in the face with two words I knew would define this upcoming year:

Granted, these two words are probably just the same thing; courage is doing regardless of potential failure.

Doing, was of course the first.

While the past few years for me have been more about being, about learning to be present, next year is about finally doing something with that, even if I don’t have it all figured out.

“Nobody can teach you your own way,” the photographer Harry Callahan noted. “The only real answer that I know of is to do it. If you don’t do it, you don’t know what might happen”

Courage.

My work might appear at Art Basel someday as well. Who knows, maybe even by my 34th birthday.

While I can’t prognosticate how exactly that would happen, I do know that this year is going to be filled with a lot more doing. And probably failing (heck it’s already had a few.)

But then, more doing.

And my hope is that my art will be an inspirational kick in the ass to other paralyzed creators as well.

mon secret. Il est très simple: “Voici on ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur.

L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Le Petit Prince

Fin

n.

I’ll leave you with one final thought: In the context of getting some momentum going for a particular project we have been attempting to see realized, my friend Austin emailed me this thought the other day.

Gravity needs mass.

Mass creates gravity.

Applied here to making art: nothing gets going without the first atom, but once it’s there, the fundamental forces of the universe start helping you assemble the rest.

Plant some seeds.

Current inspirations: Recent quotes:

“Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you’ve learned, but in the questions you’ve learned how to ask yourself.”

- Rainier Maria Rilke quoted by Bill Watterson

“I promise myself that I will take grand, unsafe pictures.”

- Robert Adams

“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”

- Tom Robbins Still Life with Woodpecker

“You know, the whole thing about perfectionism... perfectionism is very dangerous, because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything. Because doing anything results in– It’s actually kind of tragic because it means you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect it is in your head for what it really is.”

- David Foster Wallace

“[in terms of art] nobody can teach you your own way... the only real answer that I know of is to do it. If you don’t do it, you don’t know what might happen” - Harry Callahan

Recent reads:

Recent listens:

Le Petit Prince Antoine de St Exupéry

Wild Beasts Present Tense

Still Life With Woodpecker Tom Robbins

Darkside Psychic

Shantaram Gregory David Roberts

David Bowie The Next Day

Why People Photograph Robert Adams

Vieux Farka Touré Mon Pays

Reflections on the Art of Living Joseph Campbell

Boards of Canada Tomorrow’s Harvest

To Catch A Dream (Selected Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy) David Koulack

My niece endlessly singing the theme song to Frozen

Thank You. Thank you everyone who gave me feedback & inspiration for this thing: Carson Linforth Bowley Jonathan Olinger Lindsay Ratowsky Maricarmen Sierra Jeff Rosenthal

All photos available as prints.

Email me for info Or visit prints.danieljohnson.is

Thank You. Thank you everyone who invited me to stick a camera in your face: Adam Schmalholz Allison Rapson Amanda Espy Anneliese Vandenberg Austin Peck Ava Schlader Bobby Bailey Caroline Zwick Carson Linforth Bowley Cherie Leena Ditcham David Lewis Doug Aiken Erin McGowan Hanna Leess Jeff Rosenthal

Jonathan Olinger Krystina Holbrook Lindsay Ratowsky Maricarmen Sierra Meagan Suzuki Michael Dumler Monroe Alvarez Rasmus Knutsson Sekombi Katalondo Sheida Jafari Tawney Bevacqua Tini Courtney Travis Brewer Yves Muya Zuzanna Buchwald

With love,