Online Conversations: Artist Talk & Discussion with John Simmons
WATCH: June 23, 2023

Artist talk and discussion with acclaimed photographer and cinematographer John Simmons. Presenting works from his archive of early photographs and from his current practice, Simmons shared backgrounds of his multi-disciplinary career as a documentarian of social and visual culture, as well as his passion for working within the mediums of photography and film. Followed by an open Q&A.

John Simmons is an Emmy award-winning cinematographer, photographer, painter, collage artist and professor. Born in Chicago and coming of age during the Civil Rights Era, Simmons' photography started at the peak of political and racial tension of the 1960s, mentored by a well known Chicago Civil Rights photographer, Bobby Sengstacke.

Simmons was inducted into the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) in 2004, and now serves as Vice President and as co-chair of the ASC Vision Committee. He is also on the Board of Governors of the Television Academy, working to increase diversity on-set, and taught at UCLA for 26 years before leaving to focus on his photography. His photographs are held at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Center for Creative Photography, the David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland, and Harvard University, where they exhibited in "Time is Now: Photography and Social Change in James Baldwin's America" at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. His work is also in the permanent collection of the ASC.

He received his undergraduate degree from Fisk University in art and photography, and studied cinematography at the University of Southern California. He currently works and lives in Los Angeles.