Johnny Crawford – Artist & Project Director
Johnny Crawford is a visual storyteller and educator from Jackson, Georgia, who has documented the human spirit in 45 states and four continents for 43 years.
He taught photography at Grady High School, Marietta City Schools Adult Education Program, Clark Atlanta University, University of Georgia, and Mercer University. In 2017, he was the Artist -In – Residence at Middle Georgia State University and the Tubman Museum in Macon, Georgia. While at the Tubman Museum, he produced the museum’s first permanent series of black & white portraits entitled “Leading the Way – Macon Trailblazers and Activists.”
He was an award-winning staff photographer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) for over 28 years. During his tenure at the AJC, he photographed the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China; 2004 G8 Summit of World Leaders, 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, GA; 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway, and five U.S. Presidents. In 1994, he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for a photo of a new American citizen born in Romania crying while grasping the American Flag. In addition, he was the winner of the 2008 National Headliner First Place winner in Sports Photography, Georgia Associated Press 2008 Picture of the Year Winner, The Best of Cox Newspapers 2008 Sports Photography Winner, and 2008 Georgia Press Association First Place in Sports Photography and 2012 APME Georgia Newspapers Award in Sports Photography.
In 2015 he received the Cascade United Methodist Good Man Award, and in 2016 he was presented The National Urban League “I Am Empowered” Meritorious Service Award.
In 2018 he began working on the Georgia Exhibition of “The Vietnam Black Soldiers Portrait Project” in Atlanta, GA, and Macon, GA. He completed the portraits in 2019. The exhibition is currently on tour throughout the state of Georgia.
In 2021 his portrait series “The Perfect Gift” The African American Organ Transplantation Project was exhibited at the Tubman Museum and Albany State University. The exhibit is currently on tour with the DeKalb County Library Foundation and Lifelink Foundation of Georgia in metro Atlanta.
In 2023, he completed a series of portraits that document Wesleyan College’s work with the Mellon Foundation’s Crafting Democratic Futures Project, which involved both scholarly research on Wesleyan’s history and the work of Macon community members who are preserving Macon’s multifaceted and often hidden African American histories.
He has an M.A. in Photojournalism from Ohio University and B.A. Degrees in Psychology and Public Relations from Morehouse College. He teaches private photography lessons and has been married to Jacqueline Crawford for 37 years and has three adult sons.