Victoria Johnson: Capturing life and the afterlife

Victoria Johnson sat at a table in front of the Fine Arts Center, talking about photography, college and home — which is 5,300 miles away. 

Born and raised in Brazil, Johnson uprooted their life in 2017 and set new roots as an Aggie at Utah State University, choosing to major in photography and minor in sociology. Their father’s family lives nearby and boasts a long line of Aggies before them. 

“I wanted to study out of the country and I’ve just done photography, and one day I was like, ‘Wait, I could just do this for the rest of my life, and I could get paid for it,’” Johnson said.  Johnson said the decision to minor in sociology came naturally after taking the necessary classes for fun without the intention of minoring at all.  

“I think what I’ve come to learn this past semester was how important research is and how much it adds to the creative process, and how much it adds to building meaning in work,” Johnson said. “I think just using the tools that I learned in my sociology classes has been really useful and being able to access that when making work about today, politics, people and marginalized identities.” 

As their senior thesis, Johnson completed a visual study on funeral homes. 

By documenting the interior and how it is decorated and staged, she found it is a stage for the social performance that is a funeral.  

“One thing that surprised me was I definitely had this vision of how most people see death, how most people deal with it and how most people deal with the thought of a funeral,” Johnson said. “Through the work and through experiencing loss, I was able to identify that I was projecting, and a lot of that was expectations that I had, which in a similar way is like a lot of the expectations society has on people and how they should grieve. That’s what keeps the cycle of repressing emotions and not being able to openly grieve and just be really sad and experience complex emotions.”  

Johnson’s research consisted of photographing funeral homes and talking to people — collecting experiences people have had with funeral homes, and how funeral homes are perceived by the public and in the media.  

“It started off with an interest I had, for an unknown reason,” Johnson said. “I am still not really quite sure why I was so drawn to it. And then I experienced a loss, and it grew this sincere admiration and appreciation for the people in the industry. How the funeral directors are, in a way, curators who build or curate funeral homes as installations — as a stage for a social performance. Once the buzz of graduation quiets down, I think I would be interested in going to other funeral homes, probably more eclectic ones. Now that I have this realization that it’s just an installation, I would like to see some wackier ones and photograph more through that lens.” 

Jared Ragland, assistant professor of photography in the Department of Art and Design has worked closely with Johnson and been a mentor to them since he began teaching at USU two years ago.  

“Victoria was one of my first students here at USU, so working with them through the earlier analog classes through now at their senior year capstone project has been really special and rewarding,” Ragland said over the phone. “It’s been wonderful to be a part of their growth as an individual and an artist.”  

Johnson said by collaborating with others and discussing their research, they were able to get insight and form connections they hadn’t seen before. 

“It made me realize that I was probably part of the problem of the general population,” they said. “How I see death and how I think the best way to process it is. But also it made me empathize more with people, because there’s not really a manual on how to grieve, and unless you go to a lot of therapy, no one really tells you what a good way to deal with it is.” 

Johnson’s portfolio website states, “Together the pictures ultimately illustrate how these liminal spaces serve as empty containers for a family’s bereavement and mourning, all while acknowledging the ambiguities and ironies in funerary practices. As such, The body is only a vessel treats funeral homes less as venues for the exhibition of embalmed bodies and more like vessels constructed to fulfill whatever needs of those left behind, documenting how funeral practices aren’t so much a dance with death but a shuffle around it.” 

Johnson’s exhibition, “The body is only a vessel,” was on display at the USU Projects Gallery in the Fine Arts Center from Feb. 20 to March 3. Johnson was responsible for every aspect of the show — getting their work together, marketing and advertising, installing the exhibition, the reception and takedown after the exhibition was over. 

Kathy Puzey, printmaking professor and department head for the art and design program, was Johnson’s capstone BFA professor, who helps prepare students for their BFA thesis exhibition. Puzey worked with students on the display and installations of the exhibits themselves.   

“I’ve taught this class for a number of years, and it’s always great to see these students at the end of their BFA careers,” Puzey said. “To see the work put together in a cohesive manner and seeing them getting ready to take that next step out into the world, and just watching them get ready to embark on their careers. It’s been really fun and impressive to see their development.” 

Johnson is graduating in May and will take a year off before continuing to grad school.  

“I definitely want to take a year off because I’ve been in school for like six years. I did a bunch of electives and really took my time figuring out what I wanted to do,” Johnson said. “In Brazil, you don’t get to do exploratory classes. You pick your major and if you want to do a different major, you have to transfer over. That sounded really overwhelming to me because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. It wasn’t until I took the classes and was like ‘oh yeah, I could do the stuff I like to do as a career’. Who would have thought?” 

 When Johnson first started taking art classes, everything changed.  

“I think finding myself as an artist has been really meaningful to me, and understanding that it’s okay to not want to take a traditional career path,” Johnson said. “Understanding what it means to make good art, not in the sense that you have to have a college education to make good art but you know, what it involves to be thoughtful and the research that goes behind it, that’s been something I’m really proud of, and graduating too.”  

 “I have no doubt that Victoria, in whatever work they end up going into and whatever they end up studying, will be successful because of the ways in which they have pursued their artmaking, their visual vocabulary and their understanding of the world while they’ve been here at USU,” Ragland said.  

 For more information on the exhibition go to https://victoriajohnson.art/.