Krisanne Johnson is a documentary photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of Colorado and pursued postgraduate work in visual communications at Ohio University.
In 2006, she based herself in New York City as a freelance photographer. Since then, Krisanne has been working on long-term personal projects about young women and HIV/AIDS in Swaziland and post-apartheid South African youth culture.
Krisanne's work has been recognized by World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International, and the Best of Photojournalism. Her Swaziland work, titled I Love You Real Fast, has received the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, a Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography, and support from the Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund. Her work has appeared in TIME, The New Yorker, Fader Magazine and The New York Times. Most recently, Krisanne's Swaziland work was exhibited at the Visa pour l'Image festival in Perpignan, France and at the Festival of Ethical Photography in Lodi, Italy.
These structures provide a fundamental human need - shelter - and that means that they can be fertile, not just desolate. I am interested in telling the stories of the people who share these spaces and make them work in different ways, and how the massive presence of an overpass can foster and shape different kinds of social interaction, for better or for worse.