NEW YORK, NY.- Prominent photographer Barbara Karant's three-year documentation of the abandoned Johnson Publishing Company headquarters is thoughtfully curated into 820 Ebony/Jet: Visions of the Johnson Publishing Company, an American Icon (MW Editions, Hardcover $65.00). Kaleidoscopic patterns, marbled swirls, and jewel-toned, Afrocentric interiors retain the vibrant spirit of a Black publishing empire, even as the empty rooms mark the sense of its loss. Available for purchase October 13, 2026, the title features a foreword by Deborah Willis and essays by Aaron Bryant, Cheryl Finley, Carla Williams, Jon Ott, Brenna Wynn Greer, and E. James West.

Johnson Publishing Company, home to the iconic Ebony and Jet magazines, was the most influential Black-owned media corporation of its day. The exuberant interiors captured by Karant remained largely unchanged from 1972 to 2012, and each of the eleven floors of the building at 820 South Michigan Avenue featured distinct color and pattern combinations. From the cafeteria's orange, purple, and gold chevrons to Eunice Johnson's cream-and-honey office, appointed with an Igbo mask and carved ivory tusks from the couple's art collection, its bold, contemporary design asserted JPC's position at the forefront of Black American business and culture.

The building itself was an act of defiance as much as its design was. Johnson faced resistance from real estate agents and bankers wary of financing a Black-owned company. Architect John Moutoussamy’s restrained, travertine-marble exterior contrasted with the maximalist interiors by Palm Springs designers Arthur Elrod and William Raiser, but Johnson considered these seemingly disparate aesthetic visions crucial to JPC's mission of both projecting Black power and influence and creating a unique space by and for Black people.

Stripped of its furnishings, the interiors recorded by Karant in 820 Ebony/Jet stand as a record of this seminal moment in Black American history. Taken between 2013 and 2018, Karant’s close, detail-level compositions focus attention on individual surfaces: geometric wallpapers, mirrored dressing rooms, and the laminate cabinetry of the iconic Test Kitchen, whose psychedelic patterning recalls Italian marbled paper. She employs the building's mirrors and reflective surfaces to double and multiply its patterns, and her images of the executive floor's picture windows incorporate views of Lake Michigan and Grant Park.





Accompanying these photographs are documentary images of the original interiors, the Ebony in-house photo studio, and renowned artist Richard Hunt's site-specific lobby sculpture Expansive Construction (1972), commissioned the same year Hunt became the subject of MoMA's first retrospective of an African American sculptor. The book also traces the building's afterlife in contemporary art, influencing artists including Theaster Gates (who was entrusted with preserving the interiors, library, and art collection after the sale), Hank Willis Thomas, Kwame Brathwaite, Lorna Simpson, Martine Syms, and David Hartt, several of whom were featured in the 2014 Studio Museum in Harlem exhibition Speaking of People: Ebony, Jet and Contemporary Art.

Short texts from former employees who worked in the building, including their recollections, provide important documentation of JPC's history. 820 Ebony/Jet is a tribute to the achievements of this remarkable American company.

Barbara Karant

Barbara Karant is a photographer, author, and educator based in Chicago. Her commissioned photography has appeared in Architectural Digest, Metropolis, Architectural Record, Interior Design, Chicago Magazine, Domus, Esquire, and The New York Times, and her work is held in the permanent collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, The Museum of Modern Art, the Sheldon Museum of Art, and the Chrysler Museum of Art, among others. She photographed Within the Fairy Castle (1998), the definitive study of Colleen Moore's dollhouse at Chicago's Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, and is the author of two books on dogs, Greyhounds (2008) and Small Dog, Big Dog (2010).

PUBLICATION INFORMATION:

Title: 820 Ebony/Jet: Visions of the Johnson Publishing Company, an American Icon
Photographs by Barbara Karant
Foreword by Deborah Willis
Essays by Aaron Bryant, Cheryl Finley, Carla Williams, Jon Ott, Brenna Wynn Greer, and E. James West
Publisher: MW Editions (New York), first edition
Format: Hardcover, 9.25 x 11 inches, 240 pages
Images: 142 color, 8 black and white
Publication date: October 13, 2026