PHOTOGRAPHY · 2026
PORTFOLIO / VOL. 04
PORTFphotographyLIO
ALEX JOHNSON
EST. 2014 — NYC
ISSUE №·04
I'm a Brooklyn-based creative photographer with over 12 years of experience covering the kinds of stories that don't make headlines. Award-winning fashion and portrait photography. Passionate about using photography to honour the people in front of me — never to flatten them.
I work in editorial, fashion, and longform documentary. Recent commissions include Vogue Italia, Aperture, and a year-long residency at the Magnum Foundation.
School of Visual Arts, NYC · Major in Photography & Documentary
International Center of Photography · Editorial & Studio Lighting
Year-long fellowship · Reportage & longform documentary
Hilton's Magazine, Chicago · Coverage of fashion week and major openings.
2014 — 2017Black + White Studio, NYC · Lead editorial & portrait, mentoring junior shooters.
2017 — 2021Self-employed, NYC + remote · Editorial, brand, documentary commissions worldwide.
2021 — PresentI look for the frame that lets the story tell itself, without an art director needing to caption it for me.
Comfortable on Hasselblad, Leica M, and DSLR. Studio lighting, location lighting, no-lighting.
Strong preference for available light, supplemented when the editorial demands it. Single hard source most of the time.
Capture One workflow with light retouching in Photoshop. I don't believe in plastic skin or invented colour.
A two-year personal series of 64 portraits documenting strangers from across the five boroughs. Shot on Hasselblad 500CM with a single tungsten source in their own homes — each sitting under 30 minutes.
The second volume opened up the project to the people I'd been photographing for years on assignment — making the editorial intimate again, by stripping away the brief.
