The longtime San Francisco photographer David Johnson, who captured the Fillmore District in stunning detail, died Friday in Marin County at the age of 97.
A student of Ansel Adams, Johnson photographed some of the 20th century’s most notable leaders and personalities, including W. E. B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Thurgood Marshall and Jackie Robinson, as well as groundbreaking events like the 1963 March on Washington.
“He was able to capture the poignancy of people,” said his stepdaughter Candace Sue. “You can see their desire for freedom.”
Johnson’s images documenting Black San Francisco became iconic, going into the collections at the Library of Congress and the Bancroft Library at the University of California Berkeley. As part of the “Golden Decade” of photographers in San Francisco working from 1945-55, Johnson studied alongside legends like Imogen Cunningham and Minor White.
Born in segregated Florida in 1926, Johnson served in the Navy during WWII before applying to the new photography program at the San Francisco Art Institute (then the California Institute of the Arts).
“He wrote him [Ansel Adams] saying he wanted to participate in the program,” Sue said. “And he said, ‘I’m a Black man. Is that OK?’”
Johnson landed a spot in the program—the first Black student to do so—and also space to crash in Adams’ Sea Cliff home until he found a place of his own. With Adams’ advice to “photograph what you know,” Johnson focused his lens on the dynamic “Harlem of the West” that was San Francisco’s Fillmore District.
While many know about Johnson’s photography career, his civic contributions are just as lasting and significant, Sue said, and don’t always get the attention they deserve. Johnson helped organize the Black Caucus that negotiated for employee rights at the University of California San Francisco when he was working at the school.
“Black maids and janitors had to use bathrooms in the basement after cleaning floors upstairs,” Sue said. “They couldn’t even use the facilities in the place where they were working.”
Johnson also filed a lawsuit against the San Francisco Unified School District to force the desegregation of schools in the 1971 case SFUSD vs. Johnson.
“The shoulders they stand on are David’s,” Sue said. “It’s hard to believe he’s actually gone.”
In his later life, Johnson became a social worker for foster families while advocating for mental health services for the unhoused into his 90s. Johnson is survived by his four children and his wife, the author Jacqueline Sue.