Jan Johannessen
Photographer, Cinematographer
Jan Johannessen, born in 1972 in Norway, is a Oslo, Norway based photojournalist who is working in the tradition of documentary and photojournalism. He has won several prizes in the Norwegian Picture of the Year award - the most recent in 2009. He has also published three books. Two of them about Norwegian settlements in rural North Dakota and one children book based on photojournalistic images.
Johannessen has received several grants, including grants from Art Council Norway (Government Agency) and The Freedom of the Speech Foundation (NGO) in Norway, to fulfill long term projects, exhibitions and book publications.
Working for several Norwegian newspapers since 1989, Johannessen has for the last 15 years been connected with Norway's largest daily newspaper covering global news, sport and feature stories and at the moment he is the Photographer of Bureau at the Verdens Gang's Stockholm, Sweden office. In addition his photography has been published in most major newspapers in Scandinavia. Johannessen is internationally represented by Panos Pictures.
Jan participated in the March 2010 MediaStorm Storytelling Workshop. He had the following to say about his experience:
To spend a week with the best people within the industry of multimedia production, the staff and teachers at MediaStorm, has been my best workshop-experience ever.
From the pure journalistic storytelling to the technical aspects of producing a complex multimedia production, I felt I developed a concrete platform to work and improve my multimedia storytelling on my own.
Not only were the people at MediaStorm brilliant but also the fellow students gave me a fantastic week. Learning new ways to gather journalistic material also gave me new inspiration within the still photography field - and one thing is for sure: There is nothing comparable to this workshop.
Johnnie Footman, 90, may be the oldest cabbie in New York City. His age limits his time in the cab, but he remains young at heart carrying a cigar in his mouth and a cap reading: "Old Dude made of Achey Breaky Parts."