This book by photographer Barbara Karant commemorates and reflects on the Johnson Publishing Company, publisher of the iconic Ebony and Jet magazines and the most influential Black-owned media corporation of its day. Karant spent more than three years documenting the company’s historic building at 820 S. Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago, capturing the last vestiges of the original workspace after the company sold the building in 2010 and relocated in 2012. These vibrant interiors, which remained largely unchanged from 1972 to 2012, fostered the creativity of a staff working in a variety of media. Each floor of the eleven-story building flaunted distinct color and pattern combinations, and its bold, contemporary design telegraphed JPC’s position at the forefront of Black American business and culture. When Karant photographed the vacant building, its residual textures, patterns, colors, and structures maintained the spirit of the company. Stripped of its furnishings, the interiors of the former JPC headquarters simultaneously represent the spirit of this landmark company and the sense of its loss, of a seminal moment in Black American history and the history of this nation.
Accompanying the approximately 140 color photographs by Karant are essays by scholars of American art and cultural history exploring JPC’s vast influence. Documentary images of the original interiors, along with other archival material accompany the texts, which address JPC’s dominance as an image and tastemaker in mid- to late-twentieth century America, the landscape of American Black media, the Ebony in-house photo studio, and the site-specific lobby sculpture by Richard Hunt. Short texts by former employees who worked in the building contribute important documentation to JPC’s history. 820 Ebony/Jet is a tribute to the achievements of this remarkable American company.