Richard Johnson
Frozen Huts
This is the story of one man, architectural photographer Richard Johnson (New Jersey, 1957- Toronto, 2021), and the more than a thousand cabins he photographed alongside Canada’s frozen lakes, bays and rivers. A beautiful graphic document that speaks to us of the beauty of little things, and of the grandeur of natural life on the planet.
text Angie Ramón
photography Richard Johnson
In his memoirs, Richard Johnson recalled a study trip to France as a child, when he took an Instamatic camera with him for the first time and began to capture everything he saw around him. Something he would continue to do for the rest of his life: photograph the simple and beautiful things in life.
“I have always been fascinated by small structures. My first memory is of a shelter. I was six years old and living in Trinidad, California. The shelter in question was a guard house with just three walls and a sloping roof. It was a simple solution for the watchman to protect himself from the sun and tropical rains. Those shelters inspired me. In the 1960s I moved to Montreal and started building igloos in the garden. Then, in the summer, I would get together with friends to make tree houses out of ropes,” the photographer recounted.
One of Johnson’s most personal and important works was documenting the ice huts, or fishing huts, of Canada. Huts like the ones he was obsessed with as a child. For a decade he travelled the entire country in search of these unique structures. [...]
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