For decades, Ebony and Jet served as foundational pillars for documenting Black American life, culture, politics, and style. Through these groundbreaking publications, the Johnson Publishing Company established itself as the era’s most influential Black-owned media corporation, shaping national conversations and creating a vital mirror for Black achievement, beauty, and identity. In 1972, this profound cultural presence took on permanent physical form with the completion of the company’s corporate headquarters at 820 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago. More than 40 years later, photographer Barbara Karant gained access to the now-abandoned building, capturing its striking kaleidoscopic patterns, preserved mirrored surfaces, and remarkably intact 1970s interiors before they were lost to history. Her evocative photographs are now collected in 820 Ebony/Jet: Visions of the Johnson Publishing Company, an American Icon, a comprehensive new monograph published by MW Editions that meticulously preserves the building and its extraordinary design legacy.
The historical significance of the headquarters began long before anyone ever stepped foot through its doors. Publisher John H. Johnson encountered steep resistance from real estate agents, downtown landlords, and traditional commercial bankers who were openly wary of financing a major downtown development spearheaded by a Black-owned media company. Refusing to be deterred or sidelined, Johnson ultimately commissioned John Moutoussamy, who made history as the first Black architect to design a major downtown Chicago high-rise. Rather than opting for the anonymous glass-and-steel curtain-wall towers that were rapidly dominating the American corporate skyline during the early 1970s, Johnson envisioned a structure that projected enduring permanence, dignity, and distinct cultural character. Moutoussamy delivered precisely that, designing a refined, restrained exterior clad entirely in classic travertine marble that immediately established a dignified architectural presence along Michigan Avenue.
While the exterior of the building projected a dignified and measured architectural restraint, stepping inside revealed an environment that was radically more expressive, colorful, and vibrant. To design the corporate interiors, Johnson turned to the renowned Palm Springs interior design duo Arthur Elrod and William Raiser. The designers approached the commission by giving each of the building’s 11 floors its own distinct combination of saturated color palettes, bold graphics, and intricate patterns. These spaces were carefully crafted to reflect the Johnson Publishing Company’s bold cultural ambitions just as much as its corporate identity.
The employee cafeteria, for instance, paired striking orange, purple, and gold chevrons to create an energetic and dynamic communal gathering space. Meanwhile, the office of co-founder Eunice Johnson was executed in a sophisticated palette of cream and honey tones, seamlessly incorporating select pieces from the couple’s extensive private art collection. Throughout the various corporate departments, executive offices, and editorial suites, designers deployed geometric wallpapers, expansive mirrored surfaces, bold patterned carpets, and richly textured finishes that fully embodied the peak of 1970s interior design while remaining entirely unique to the institution.
Remarkably, a vast majority of this ambitious interior design scheme remained completely untouched and unchanged until the Johnson Publishing Company finally departed the building in 2012. Recognizing the vanishing historical value of these spaces, photographer Barbara Karant began documenting the empty headquarters the following year, continuing her meticulous photographic project through 2018. With the original office furniture, desks, and filing cabinets completely gone, Karant focused her artistic lens intensely on the fixed architectural surfaces and intricate material details that defined the building’s unforgettable interiors.
Her compositions highlight geometric wallpapers, mirrored dressing rooms, and the Test Kitchen’s mesmerizing, swirling laminate cabinetry, whose psychedelic patterning closely recalls traditional Italian marbled paper. Across many of her photographs, strategic mirrors double and multiply motifs within the frame, creating complex visual layers. Simultaneously, the expansive picture windows on the executive floor frame sweeping, panoramic views of Lake Michigan and Grant Park, anchoring the vibrant interior spaces firmly within the physical landscape of downtown Chicago.
The inherent emptiness of the building plays a critical role in giving Karant’s photographs their unique emotional and aesthetic power. Stripped entirely of the people, bustling newsrooms, piles of magazines, and day-to-day administrative activity that once animated the headquarters for decades, the empty rooms transform into quiet, contemplative studies in color, pattern, and material culture. At the same time, they function as haunting, precise historical records of a workplace and a monumental cultural institution that no longer exists in this physical form.
The new monograph broadens this visual record significantly by pairing Karant’s modern architectural photography with rare archival documentary images of the original furnished interiors, behind-the-scenes views of Ebony’s legendary in-house photo studio, and documentation of Richard Hunt’s striking site-specific lobby sculpture, Expansive Construction, which was installed in 1972. To ground the architectural and visual history in human experience, the book also incorporates personal recollections and firsthand accounts from former employees who worked inside the building during its heyday. Furthermore, the volume traces the enduring aesthetic and cultural influence of 820 South Michigan Avenue on a prominent generation of contemporary artists, including Theaster Gates, Hank Willis Thomas, Kwame Brathwaite, Lorna Simpson, Martine Syms, and David Hartt.
Spanning 240 pages, 820 Ebony/Jet brings together 142 vibrant color plates and eight black-and-white images. The publication is anchored by an insightful foreword written by artist Deborah Willis, alongside a series of critical essays contributed by scholars and writers Aaron Bryant, Cheryl Finley, Carla Williams, Jon Ott, Brenna Wynn Greer, and E. James West. Together, these texts and images work in tandem to preserve a remarkable, often-overlooked chapter of American design history—capturing the physical environment that was meticulously conceived and built for two pioneering publications that fundamentally transformed how Black American life was seen, documented, and celebrated on a global scale.
Published by MW Editions, 820 Ebony/Jet: Visions of the Johnson Publishing Company, an American Icon is available for purchase for $65.
