A dream begun so long ago

David Johnson, a native of Jacksonville, Florida was the first African American student of Ansel Adams. In his 1946 classes at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), Johnson was advised to photograph his own neighborhood and document the faces and places with which he was most familiar. He subsequently became an important chronicler of black life in San Francisco in the middle part of the 20th century. Now in his late 80s, Johnson is considered a pioneer as a photographer in the San Francisco Fillmore community - title page.