NEWS

Honoring Ansel Adams' first black student

David Johnson, 92, who documented life in post-WWII San Francisco, back in Jacksonville for Ritz ceremony

Matt Soergel
msoergel@jacksonville.com
David Johnson, 92, poses at the Ritz Theatre and Museum with a book about his life and work. A Jacksonville native, Johnson was the first African-American student of famed photographer Ansel Adams. [Will Dickey/Florida Times-Union]

David Johnson, just out of the Navy in 1946, left his hometown of Jacksonville for San Francisco to become renowned photographer Ansel Adams' first black student. He stayed there, and for more than two decades photographed life in that city, particularly in its largely black neighborhood known as the Fillmore District.

He eventually left professional photography behind, but late in life his work was rediscovered as authors and documentarians began to explore the history of the gentrifying Fillmore District.

His photos were exhibited in museums, collected in a book called "Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Jazz Era" and featured in a PBS documentary called "The Fillmore." He got an agent who sold his work to art collectors, and a short film, "Positive Negatives," was made about his life and work.

Now 92, he's back for a visit in Jacksonville, to be recognized at a ceremony at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Ritz Theatre and Museum.

He and his wife, Jacqueline Annette Sue, visited the theater Friday morning, stepping out of a van into the bright Florida sunshine. "Feels like coming back home," he said.

Ritz administrator Adonicca Toler told him that "Positive Negatives" will be played at the Saturday event, dignitaries will speak and his hometown will issue a proclamation in his honor.

Johnson gave a wry smile. "This is not to be missed," he said.

Toler told him there will also be a chance for him to speak. She encouraged him: "Think about how you want to tell your story."

It's a good story.

Johnson was born in segregated Jacksonville in 1926 and raised in a little house on Dewitt Street, just off Beaver Street, not far from the Ritz. He got his first camera at 12, a prize from a magazine subscription. He began taking photos of his neighborhood and his friends — and that was it.

"Something kept saying, 'This is your destiny,'" he said.

It took him just a few years to begin to fulfill that destiny. He was drafted into the Navy during World War II, which took him to San Francisco, where he was impressed by its black neighborhood, the Fillmore District, which had been largely Japanese until the government sent its residents to internment camps after the war began.

The Fillmore, he said, reminded him of the busy LaVilla neighborhood near his home in Jacksonville — though in San Francisco, he could take any seat he wanted on a bus, unlike in his segregated hometown.

He came back to Jacksonville, briefly, after serving 11 months in the Philippines. Still a teenager, he then applied to be student at a new photography program Adams was leading at the California School of Fine Arts. In his letter, he told Adams he was black, not wanting to be apply under false pretenses. He believes that might have intrigued the photographer, because when a spot opened up, Adams invited him out.

The G.I. Bill paid for his training, which came from Adams and such influential photographers as Minor White, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston and Imogene Cunningham. Johnson didn't have the money to document Yosemite as Adams did. But he did have a 4X5 view camera, bought from what he called a "hock shop" in Jacksonville.

He carried it everywhere, and starting in 1946 he began using it to document life in the Fillmore District — civil-rights marches, jazz clubs, neighborhood children and the black celebrities who came through town. He worked for a black newspaper and had a photo studio in the neighborhood, as told in a book his wife wrote about him called, "A Dream Begun So Long Ago: The Story of David Johnson, Ansel Adams' First African American Student."

His work, some 5,000 images, is now owned by the University of California. Johnson said he wants to have an exhibit of his photographs in his hometown before he dies, but it's a complicated and somewhat expensive process. Toler told him she's working on it, trying to bring it to Ritz. "Absolutely," she said.

As the Fillmore District changed in the 1970s, Johnson stopped being a full-time photographer and began to work in the post office and in human resources at a university, among other jobs. It's been a long time since he lugged that old hock shop camera with him wherever he went.

"I'm shooting on a cellphone now," he said.

Matt Soergel: (904) 359-4082