“Every floor is different, and every floor has surprises.”      

John H. Johnson, former CEO Johnson Publishing Company

This visual project commemorates and reflects on the essence of the Johnson Publishing Company, the most influential African American–owned corporation of its day, focusing on the company’s historic building in its semi-skeletal state—before the last vestiges of the original workspace vanished from 820 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago. These lively interiors fostered the creativity of a staff working in a variety of media, including the iconic Ebony and Jet magazines. Even with that staff now long gone, the Johnson Building still embodied the spirit of this company, which occupied this space essentially unaltered from 1972 to 2012. It remained a genuine cultural time capsule of African American enterprise: a specific stylistic vocabulary that had survived the passage of the decades. The Johnson Building, stripped of its furnishings, presented a unique opportunity: to document the resonant interiors of its long-time occupant—interiors that simultaneously represented the spirit of this landmark company and the sense of its loss, of a seminal moment in African American history and the history of this nation.

These images of 820 Ebony/Jet transcend time and memory. With the complete interior renovation of 820 South Michigan, which culminated in 150 residential rental units the remarkable Johnson Publishing interior no longer exists. The 820 Ebony/Jet images are a critical documentation of this vital part of cultural history and the sole document capturing the space after the company departed and before the interiors were demolished.

This project honors the achievements of this remarkable Illinois based company.

Barbara Karant