Shutter Stories: A Student Photography Workshop

The USC Center for Civil Rights History and Research and the Columbia Museum of Art partner on this hands-on photography workshop for middle-school aged students. Participants learn about the work of esteemed photographer Richard Samuel Roberts, whose work from the 1920s and ’30s is featured in the Our Story Matters Gallery exhibition Intersections on Main Street: African American Life in Columbia as well as the CMA-organized exhibition Interior Lives: Modern American Spaces, 1890–1945. Following a tour of the galleries, students learn more about the art of composition and practice portrait photography in a recreation of Roberts’ Washington Street studio, with instruction led by photographer and CMA Communications Assistant Victor Johnson. Participants provide their own digital camera; all other equipment provided. Free with registration courtesy of Columbia SC 63: Our Story Matters. 

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A self-taught photographer, Victor Johnson considers himself a visual storyteller and capturer of memories. He can remember documenting family vacations and moments with friends with disposable cameras during his adolescent years and began to take serious interest in photography once purchasing a camera in late 2014. While enjoying different genres of photography, Johnson has primarily focused on candidly documenting people and moments while creating visual stories. Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he collaborated with local artists, models, and other creatives in sharing their stories and worked alongside nonprofits including Our Next Generation, Unity in Motion, and Project Kindred to document and assist with photography-based community building programs. Johnson became a Columbia resident in 2022 and works at the CMA as communications assistant with a major role in media production. He has also worked with CMA affinity group Friends of African American Art & Culture as well as the USC Department of African American Studies. Johnson’s work has been published in Obsidian Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora Magazine volume 46.2