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Johnny Joo (born May 7, 1990) is an American writer, photographer and visual artist. He photographs and documents urban decay of abandoned and historic structures.

Life and Career
Johnny Joo was born on May 7, 1990 in Willoughby, Ohio. He was raised in Mentor, Ohio. He attended Mentor High School, but also attended Euclid High School where he completed two years in a commercial art program, graduating in 2008. Joo later attended Lakeland Community College for a short time.

Joo began experimenting with photography at Mentor High School, where he took a black and white film class in 2006. Initially, Joo saw this only as a creative outlet to add to the other art mediums that he enjoyed creating through, but quickly realized that photography would become his main focus as an artistic medium after photographing a collapsing barn in the city of Kirtland, Ohio for a class project. Over the next eight years, he continued to photograph abandoned places throughout Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New York, Maryland, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia. From 2006-2011, Joo's body of work consisted mainly of photographs, with occasional small bits of informative history, but by 2012 had begun to grow into much more detailed historical and journalistic pieces. In 2011, Joo was selected as a finalist in Energizer's Ultimate Photo Contest in partnership with National Geographic. In 2012, Joo began posting his work to a blog called Architectural Afterlife, which contains photographs alongside detailed written pieces of the abandoned places he visits. By 2014, Joo had collected enough writing and photography to build a book relating to abandoned places. He compiled these works into his first book, titled "Empty Spaces: Photojournalism Through the Rust Belt." Until this time, Joo's work had become recognizable by some in the urban exploration community across the United States, but was still mostly recognized locally. In April 2014, Buzzfeed ran an article about abandoned malls across the United States, which featured Joo's photographs of Rolling Acres Mall of Akron, Ohio and Randall Park Mall of North Randall, Ohio. The article went viral over the next 24 hours, bringing attention not only to the many abandoned places across the United States, but what was happening to the country due to economic failures. A month later in May 2014, the Huffington Post featured Joo's work. The article featured 28 images of his work throughout abandoned places, and mentioned the release of his first book.

In April of 2014, Joo photographed an abandoned film studio, which ended up being a film location for the film Diary of a Hitman. The photos were later published in numerous articles within the photography community.

In 2015 and 2016, Joo traveled from Ohio to Oregon to photograph and document abandoned places across the United States. These photos were compiled into two books - Americana Forgotten and Unbuilt by Time.

In 2015, Joo also visited the abandoned Land of Oz theme park in North Carolina , as well as Mike Tyson's former mansion in Ohio. In January of 2015, he photographed the abandoned neighborhood of Lincoln Way - a story which ended up gaining a lot of attention on his blog - both positive and negative. In April of 2015, Joo and his photos were criticized by Clairton, PA manager Howard Bednar when fire was set to the abandoned neighborhood of Lincoln Way in an article stating “No one lives up that road, and the only reason people go up there is because some moron wrote a story that there’s ghosts up there."

Over the years, Joo has photographed some important historic locations from states of abandonment to restoration, such as the Steele Mansion of Painesville, Ohio.

As of 2018, Joo continues to post on a regular basis on architecturalafterlife.com.

Forgotten Dreams is Joo's fourth book in his series of photo books documenting abandoned places, and is set to release January 2019.

Style
Joo's photographs usually depict a scene of abandonment within a structure left to decay. His work often portrays melancholy scenes through use of somber color tones and deep contrast. Joo's body of work contains a wide range of scenes, from abandoned farm homes untouched for years, to gritty urban and industrial scenes, abandoned amusement parks, malls, asylums, stadiums and more. His photographs almost always make use of only natural and ambient lighting available in the scene.

Some of Joo's most recognizable photographs include Rolling Acres Mall filled with snow, Mike Tyson's abandoned mansion , Randall Park Mall   and the Pontiac Silverdome just to name some.

Works

 * Empty Spaces: Photojournalism Through the Rust Belt. Self-published (May 2014)
 * Our Future (2015) - Vocals, Music, Producer
 * Americana Forgotten (soft cover first edition). Self-published (May 2016)
 * Americana Forgotten (hard cover edition). Self-published (November 15, 2016) ISBN 0998101613
 * Unbuilt by Time: The World We Once Knew. Self-published (2017) ISBN 978-0-9981016-2-0
 * Out There. Self-published (2017)
 * Forgotten Dreams. (yet to be released) (January 2019)

Collaborative works and publications

 * Gravity Plex (game) (2013) - Soundtrack
 * Zombie Dream (2014) - Photography
 * Fondle Magazine Issue 3 (2015)
 * Our Future (2015) - Vocals, Music, Producer
 * A Gamer's Life (2016) - Music Department
 * World's Lost Places II: Urban Exploration Photography. Mitteldeutscher Verlag ISBN 978-3-95462-534-5 (2017)
 * Local Hauntings (2018) - Cinematographer
 * Alone in the Woods (2018) - Still Photographer

Exhibitions
28th Annual Cuyahoga County Regional Scholastic Art Exhibition - Group show - Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, 2007

Perspectives - Group show - Ashtabula, Ohio, 2014

Vacant Creation - Group show - Abandoned Parking Deck, Ashtabula, Ohio 2015

Reclamation - Solo exhibition - 464 Gallery, Buffalo, New York, 2015

Unveiled - Solo show - Mentor City Hall, Mentor, Ohio, 2017