Born in Mississippi in 1972, Nikki Johnson lives in New York’s Lower East Side. Johnson divides a large part of her photographic work between what she terms ‘passive-aggressive’ portraiture and self-portraiture, and an ongoing series of documentary images from around the world.

Her portraits are, by her own description, ‘messy and complicated‘. She creates images that alternately reveal and conceal. Friends, co-workers, and the most casual of acquaintances are represented, but occasionally the subjects of her images are people who have literally created new identities for themselves.

Close-cropped scenes of environments are also a fixture within her work, such as blood from an assault victim outside her apartment building. The result is a miniature landscapes that can be as telling as any human face. - Nikki Johnson holds a Masters degree in Photography from Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY and a BFA degree from Mississippi University for Women. - Featured Images: from top left - Caress, Derica in Black and Frederika, 8th Street Station, NYC.