Wellfleet Adult Community Center
Monthly exhibit of Outer Cape Contemporary Artists
Miah Nate Johnson - Photography
Curated by Robert Rindler
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
In a few seconds, an unspoken script of untold interaction arises. Characters walk onto the stage, a second passes and the scene has changed, the play has ended. I photograph the street very much like a stage, filling the frame with energy, emotions, unveilings, and risk.
In the few seconds of time and light I leave just enough room for the audience to get in there and form an opinion. Whether in color or black and white this momentary awareness subtly brings the viewer into relationships with seemingly dissimilar elements. In these images, relationships emerge slowly and sometimes bestow themselves with a finality.
My work is a response to a moment when the world falls into place and reveals boundaries between public and private, the individual and society. In appearing accidental, this visionary reaction-from a brief glance to a rigid glare exposes the American experience of alienation in culture. That captured second opens discussions about concepts that invoke our fears and anxieties: economic and political affairs, consumer culture, racism and loneliness.
Wellfleet, Cape Cod, my home, is a place of remoteness, contrast, desperation and isolation. The Cape photographs expose the viewer into an isolated lonely or masked personal world of small town and marginal living. The personal photographs I produce of the Cape are meant to be honest. They sometimes can be perceived as brutal. I do not twist what I see into something nice. I photograph what I see. I record the moments of lives for exactly what they are.
These photographs lend the subjects an unusual, sometimes almost unbearable, presence. The portraits are voyeuristic, even obscure. They broach the boundaries of private and public as they make moments that don't warrant reflection or examination until caught in a photograph. My photos inspire a conversation: They observe and ask questions of society and ask viewers to do the same. No answers are expected; it is the question. that drives the experience.
ARTIST’S BIO
Wellfleet Photographer and painter Miah Nate Johnson, has exhibited his photographs throughout the country, and across the globe. He has received enthusiastic accolades from the press for many years.
His photography work has been featured in many periodicals: The New York Times, San Francisco Examiner, City Sun, and of course the local press. The Cape Cod Times, The Banner, The Cape Codder, The Independent and even The Associated Press have acknowledged and published his work often.
Johnson received a BFA in photojournalism and documentary photography from the Academy of Art Collage in San Francisco and studied in the MFA program at The Art Institute of Boston. He was awarded Massachusetts Cultural Grants for several years and has been a member of Blackstar Agency in NYC, throughout his time taking photographs.
Miah Johnson’s photographs have been exhibited locally at: The Wellfleet Library, The National Seashore Visitor Center, WHAT Theater, The Griffin Museum of Photography, and Lesley College, and now at The Wellfleet Adult Community Center.