ABOUT

John Janson-Moore is an award-winning visual artist, photographer and filmmaker, working across a broad spectrum of media.

His photography is diverse, encompassing portraiture, documentary and conceptual art.

2022 and 2021 saw John selected as a back-to-back finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. He was a winner of the Australian Photography Awards in 2022 and in 2013, he won the Moran Prize for Contemporary Photography. In 2016, John was selected as a finalist in the Head On Portrait Prize as part of the biggest photographic festival in Australia. He is a triple finalist for the Percival Photographic Portrait Prize.

John’s photography has been featured at the Sydney Opera House with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, along side the work of Ai Wei Wei, Michael Wolf and others. His work has been published in The Guardian, The Conversation, Marie Claire and The Neighourhood newspapers and a range of other news sites, including the ABC.

John’s artistic work traverses a precarious line between documentary and fiction, exploring the notion of 'truth' in people's personal, social and public lives. His practice is placed within the media arts, situated media and photomedia contexts. He was a collaborative artist featured in the Biennale of Sydney in 2020, and lead artist and director of ‘Contact Trace’, a site-specific video installation at Sydney Hospital in 2021.

John is also a highly experienced director, producer and writer of documentaries, drama and short films. His work has seen him produce a range of creative media content, from broadcast television to the web.

His film work centres around character driven narratives that explore and illuminate the human condition, with an emphasis on irresistible story telling and drama at its heart. His short , ‘Contact Trace’, won the best experimental film prize at the Solaris Film Festival in Nice, France in 2022. He wrote and directed 'Not In My House', a series of dramatized shorts which won an ATOM Award in 2012, while his long-form documentary, ‘Kidnapped!’ made its world premiere at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, in competition for the Silver Wolf Award. 'Kidnapped!' was supported by the Sundance Foundation (USA) and the Japan Foundation. John has worked widely in broadcast television, including with the ABC and SBS in Australia.

John's film, photographic and art works have been exhibited extensively both in Australia and internationally. His work is currently held by the Australian Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Australian Parliamentary Library, as well as the State Library of New South Wales and the Pandora Archive, a joint venture with the National Library of Australia. He holds a Doctorate in Creative Arts from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), where he currently teaches.

John lives, works and loves on unceded Gadigal land, Sydney, Australia.