Joe Doherty | The Johnny Chronicles: An Anthology of Love and Absurdity

July 2 – 26, 2026

ArtHop Reception: July 2nd, 5-8PM

Artist Talk and Reception: July 25th, 1-5PM

The Johnny Chronicles
By Joe Doherty

When Johnny was born the doctor and the priest advised my parents to leave him at the hospital, destined for an institution, never to be a part of our family. They ignored that advice, which was a blessing for John and for us.

When I began taking photographs at age 13 Johnny was one of my few eager subjects. Five years younger than me, he didn’t shy away and often struck a pose. Over time photography became a bonding activity for us, where he would pose for me if I let him shoot, too. On one occasion I gave him the camera and he spent a roll of film chasing our dog Moose around the yard.

As my photography progressed over the next ten years, from beginner to early professional, I kept photographing Johnny and his world. The schools he attended, family events, the Special Olympics, and our staged encounters were all documented.

The thing is, I had no intention of creating a documentary. I don’t consider myself a documentary photographer.

I had long promised myself that I would scan all of the film I still had from the 70s and 80s when I had the time. When COVID hit I had the time. As I digitized roll after roll I began organizing the images into separate collections, and the Johnny Chronicles began. I posted them on Facebook with captions that were true – but rarely factual. After a short time they became popular, and friends revealed their own stories about a Downs family member. After a somewhat longer time friends began asking when I would make a book.

In the middle of all of this, in April 2022, Johnny passed away from a lung infection. He was 57 years old. His death caused me to reflect on what his life had meant to us – his seven siblings – and to the larger community to which he belonged. He was known as loving and funny, and an absurdist of the first rank. For several years he would only sign his name, “Marty McFly.” It was this spirit that is reflected in the captions of my photographs.

On occasion my images were compared to those made by Diane Arbus. She photographed people with Downs living in an institution from 1969 – 1971. These were Johnny’s contemporaries, and it is the kind of place he would have lived if my parents followed the advice of the doctor and the priest. Arbus’ subjects appear isolated, at a distance, foreign. They are The Other.

What I’ve concluded after creating this body of work is that Arbus was stumped. She did not understand the fullness of lives she photographed, which were so very different from hers. How different? Johnny and his friends were rarely angry, they were not competitive, they shrugged off failure, they always had a good time, and they were very loving. They were Utopian. Johnny taught us empathy, and expanded our ambitions beyond the confines of our social and religious inheritance.

That is what the photographs in The Johnny Chronicles are about. His was a life lived in full, and his influence was widespread. He was seen by me and by others, and he never missed an opportunity to quote Jack Torrence from The Shining: “Heeere’s Johnny!”

The Johnny Chronicles. Great Party Press, 2025. www.greatpartypress.com

Perspectives: Point of View by Edward Gillum

Captive Isolation by Jesse Merrell

Remnants of the Past by Travis Rockett

Exhibit: September 7 to October 1, 2023

Art Hop Reception: September 7, 2023 – 5PM to 8PM

Our ideas, dreams and memories are our own. They help us weave our version of a reality that may or may not be in agreement with others, even those close to us. When is the last time you just did not see eye to eye with a friend or loved one? Choosing to agree to disagree can bring about peace without necessarily assuming the other’s perspective or point of view.

We are all capable of reconstructing memories of childhood. One memory might include playing a game called ‘telephone’ in which several kids sit in a circle, and one person tells a story or a joke to the person on their left, (or right), and as the story or joke is passed from one to the next person, finally coming full circle back to the first teller of the story or joke, and it is not the same as the original version.

This example of a commonly shared experience among many serves as one illustration of how each participant brings their uniqueness and differences to a given situation, establishing a clear depiction of their own personal thoughts, ideas, opinions, i.e. their perspectives and as such, their overall point
of view.

I work best when I am guided by a self-imposed system and/ or a set of fairly rigid parameters. And as a process for the upcoming show, I chose to give myself the job of reacting to the notion that everyone has a different perspective, so that for this installation, I would need to collect a large quantity
of perspectives. In this case that would involve searching and accumulating many visual images that illustrate a depth of space or perspective. The extreme heat we experienced in late July and early August gave me cause to stay indoors, enjoying the AC, (after the crisis of my AC going down on the
“hottest” day of the year), working on the computer searching for and then processing images. It dawned on me that the accumulation of many images of perspectives could be printed on wallpaper and formed into a cone, open on one end and at the other end – a point (of view). – Edward Gillum

While the Coronavirus continues to spread across the globe, our response to it has eased by many degrees. The COVID lockdown in 2020 certainly has made a lasting impact on our lives, both personally and professionally. Its effect clings to us in our motivation patterns, our work environment, and even our social lifestyles – with some too afraid to be as social as before and minimizing contact with others, and many others seeming to make up for lost social time.

Captive Isolation is a conversation of that difficult time. It is an interpretation and exploration of concepts of “Social Distance,” “Mask Up,” and “Lockdown.” How I chose to express this is with human figure and form, made bare, naked
and exposed.

The human nude is a classical prompt; often used in fine art illustrations and photography. In this series, I am relating this to the exposure to the coronavirus long before we were even made aware it existed and through the initial stages of the pandemic. Our bodies were vulnerable to the virus, and so
naked to the environment we were.

It was important to express a feeling of loneliness in this collection. Isolation does many things to the social mind, and being isolated, alone, and naked is certainly one way to illustrate this. Further, the concept of “masking up”
has become so commonplace now, but at the time was an imposition, a requirement. It can also be interpreted as us being ignorant of the goings on in the world, especially in relation to finding a viable vaccine. But in that sense, our masks can also be blindfolds or shrouds.

Lastly, the exploration uses bondage and kink as a visual metaphor for the lockdown. The loss of freedom; unable to relax and socialize as we would so choose. Instead, and with the understanding of safety, we freely surrendered our mobility to our caretakers and leaders, and let them dictate our decisions.
This is comparable to the relationship that a dominant or master has over their submissive.

The other link to the lockdown that this series connects to is the hyper sexualization experienced by many, which may have been a mix of a need to connect socially, survival instinct, and even boredom. Add this to the mix of frustration, sadness, anger, and in some cases, joy, that the pandemic caused
emotionally and mentally, and we can conclude that our personal experience with the lockdown is deeply personal and individually unique. However, I feel we all can relate to some aspects of the works presented in this series; not only locally, but internationally as well.

We may have been captive, isolated, and alone; but as the human community, we were alone together. – Jesse Merrell

Over the last several years, I have been enamored with historical places. “Remnants of the Past” was born from my explorations of these places and spaces. It has been a collection that I will continuously update, as it really reflects an area I am passionate about: History. This selection of works comes from photographs while traveling to Bodie, CA and Alcatraz. Both places were a joy to explore, and I was amazed to see so much preserved in arrested decay. Between
the external shots, the interiors, and the details, I had so much to discover, and my drive to keep looking for more inspiration from the past was definitely stimulated.

I have always been enamored by the past. I enjoy working with my prints and trying to make them look more vintage or as though they were taken in a bygone era. This show has a combination of Black and White, Color, and Toned images, all of which I hope captures the essence of time and place, all while bringing my subjects into focus.

It is my hope that my photography inspires others to seek out these amazing places, and perhaps see if they can find my exact view! – Travis Rockett

Spectrum Art Gallery’s New Hours of Operation:

Thursdays and Fridays: 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Saturdays and Sundays: 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM

Tag: portraiture

Joe Doherty – The Johnny Chronicles