Leigh Johnson has used her eye for the sensual, the obscure, the delicate and the strange to develop a visual language which is simultaneously sensitive, psychological, erotically charged, and possessed of a kind of animal instinct. 

Her practice includes photography, filmmaking, painting, ceramics, and writing, all of which are underpinned by an insatiable impulse for storytelling. This narrative element is reflected in the titles she chooses: excerpts of short stories which place the works into constellation, prompting each to inform the others’ meaning.

This fascination with the story animates her relation to the physical environment; she is concerned with the history of objects, making art from found pieces which place her in an intimate relation to strangers and the materiality attending their existence. Space, she allows also to speak: openings and barriers, gates, staircases, and holes function as metaphors for the psyche as she grapples with the subjects of sex, death, and grief, using repetition of these motifs to rehearse her obsessions.

Clients include Céline, Gucci, Chloé, Marc Jacobs, Gabriela Hearst, Proenza Schouler, Isabel Marant, Repossi, Adidas and Apple. She was the set photographer for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, and her work has been exhibited at Journal Gallery, New York, Rivington Arms, New York, and Farago, Los Angeles.