Tonika Lewis Johnson

Tonika Lewis Johnson is an American photographer, social justice artist, and community activist based in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. She is known for her photographic and mapping projects, including the Folded Map Project, which visually investigates segregation by comparing corresponding North and South Side residences, and Inequity For Sale, which documents the effects of discriminatory land sale contracts in Black neighborhoods. Johnson is a co-founder of both the Resident Association of Greater Englewood (R.A.G.E.) and the Englewood Arts Collective. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2025 and a Chicago Magazine Chicagoan of the Year in 2017.

Johnson grew up in Englewood, Chicago, her grandmother having lived there since the 1960s.^[1] She attended Lane Technical High School, one of the city's most selective high schools, where she became aware of the inequality of education between North and South Side Chicago schools.^[1][2] She grew up an only child in an artistic family; her mother wrote, her father enjoyed photography, and her extended family were visual artists.^[1] Johnson began purusing photography herself in high school.^[1]

She graduated from Columbia College Chicago in 2003 with a bachelor's of arts in journalism,^[3] and from National Louis University in 2005 with an MBA.^[4]

After graduating from college, Johnson worked as a grant writer for nonprofits and social service organizations.^[1] In 2010, she co-founded the Resident Association of Greater Englewood. She was appointed to the Cultural Advisory Council for the Chicago City Council.^[5] Johnson continued to pursue photography as a hobby, but did not view her work as art until it was described as such by commenters online.^[1] In 2016, she received a grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs for her documentary photography; she used the grant money to create prints of her work for the first Englewood Art Fair.^[1]

In 2018, Johnson initiated the Folded Map Project, which explores how Chicago's North and South sides have developed conversantly due to decades of racial policy. The project is multifaceted, including documentary photography, meetings between residents in the two areas, a short film, and a school curriculum.^[6] In 2020, the Folded Map Project was organzed as a nonprofit, with Johnson serving as CEO.^[7] In 2021, she created the piece "Inequity for Sale" as part of the project. The installation piece used plaques on South Side homes to share the history of Black home buyers being treated unfairly in the 1950s and 1960s. She expanded the work with a podcast, documentary photography, and interviews with residents who lived in the area at the time.^[6]

In 2023, Johnson launched UnBlocked Englewood with the Chicago Bungalow Association. The project aims to "[reimagine] home improvement and neighborhood revitalization as public art," with a focus on 25 homes. As of 2025, half of the homes have been repaired, with support from a grant from the city.^[6]

• 2025: MacArthur Fellow^[6]
• 2024: Fellow, Gordon Parks Foundation^[8]
• 2023: Community Impact Award, Metropolitan Planning Council^[9]
• 2022: Influencer, Landmarks Illinois^[10]
• 2022: City of Chicago's Together We Heal Creative Placemaking Grant^[11]
• 2021: Artist-As-Instigator Residency, National Public Housing Museum^[12]
• 2020: Corlis Benefideo Award, North American Cartographic Information Society^[13]
• 2020: Planning Advocate Award, American Planning Association^[14]
• 2019: Leaders for a New Chicago Award, Field Foundation^[15][16]
• 2017: Chicagoan of the Year, Chicago Magazine^[7]

• The Long Dream, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (Fall 2020)^[17]
• Envisioning Justice Exhibition, Sullivan Galleries at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Summer 2019)^[18][19][20]
• Folded Map, Loyola University Museum of Art (Summer 2018)^[21]
• Everyday Englewood, Loyola University Museum of Art (Spring 2018)^[22]
• From the INside, Harold Washington Library (April - June 2017)^[23]
• Chicago: Places, People & Possibilities, Chicago Cultural Center (Feb - April 2017)

• Johnson, Tonika Lewis; Krysan, Maria (2024-11-19). Don't Go. Cambridge Hoboken (N.J.): Polity. ISBN 978-1-5095-6444-6.

Johnson lives in Englewood, Chicago.^[24][25] She has two children.^[1]

• https://www.tonijphotography.com/
• https://www.foldedmapproject.com/