What is John's story?

Photographing the diversity of culture and history has led John Kimmich Javier from pre-Columbian civilizations in Central America to European and Islamic civilizations in Spain. Assignments have taken him to Spain to photograph architecture, to Egypt to document an ancient ceramist community, and to Sweden to photograph palace interiors.

Kimmich Javier has exhibited and participated in more than seventy solo and group shows including Gauss Fotografiskt Galleri in Sweden; El Visor Centre Fotografic in Spain; Robert Freidus Gallery and Cayman Gallery in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; Chicago Cultural Center; Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago; Galer’a Spectrum in Spain; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; California Museum of Photography, and other institutions.

His photographs and texts have appeared in La Fotograf’a and Foto Professional (Spain), Creative Camera (England), Bild, Gstenborgs-Posten, and Upsala Nya Tidning (Sweden), the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Architectural Record, and other publications. Kimmich Javier's work also is included in the collections of IBM, AT&T, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, Price Waterhouse & Co., and other corporate, public, and private collections.

Trained as an architect at the University of Illinois, Kimmich Javier began photographing in his last year of study at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in France. After graduate studies in architectural and art history at the University of Illinois, he studied photography and sculpture at Purdue University. From 1978 to 1986, he was a full-time member of the faculty at Columbia College in Chicago. In 1988, he was a visiting artist at the School of the Universidad del Pa’s Vasco in Bilbao and San Sebastian, Spain. In 1990, he joined the Iowa faculty. He continues to work as a freelance editorial and architectural photographer.