LACY SOTO | DATE 11/7/2026

Artbook @ Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles Bookstore presents Eirik Johnson launching 'Leviathan Rising'

Saturday, November 7 at 3 PM, Artbook @ Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles Bookstore presents the Los Angeles launch of Eirik Johnson: Leviathan Rising, published by MW Editions. Join Eirik Johnson in conversation with Sam Hockley-Smith.

RSVP here for free. *Please note that space is limited to 50 seats.

Pre-order a signed copy here.

The massive transoceanic barges that travel along the Inside Passage carrying goods to and from Alaskan waters often port in Duwamish, Washington, a deeply polluted river ecosystem that flows into the Salish Sea. The images in Leviathan Rising, taken by American photographer Eirik Johnson (born 1974), capture the patinated exteriors of these beastly structures and transform scale, perspective and light. The volume also contains a series of unique daguerreotype photograms, created in collaboration with photographer Daniel Carrillo, depicting glass floats used by early 20th-century Japanese fishermen to suspend their nets in the Pacific Ocean. Sylvia Wolf, director emerita of the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, contributes an essay on a site-specific installation of this body of work, and Los Angeles–based musician and writer Sam Hockley-Smith addresses the sound component of the exhibited work, composed of aquatic field recordings that Johnson made beneath the surface of the Duwamish River.

ABOVE: "Dioskouroi," 2021

Eirik Johnson makes conceptually grounded work examining the global intersections of contemporary environmental, social, and economic issues. Employing various modes of presentation from photobooks to experiential photo- and sound-based installation, Johnson’s photographic and interdisciplinary projects explore the marks and connections formed in the friction of these complicated relationships. He has exhibited his work at institutions including the Aperture Foundation, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle. Johnson’s work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; International Center of Photography, New York; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno; and the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY. His previous monographs include Road to Nowhere (2021), Barrow Cabins (2019), Pine (2018), Sawdust Mountain (2009), and Borderlands (2005).

Sam Hockley-Smith is a writer, manuscript and magazine editor, and radio DJ based in LA. His work has appeared in The FADER, The New York Times Magazine, Pitchfork, The Southwest Review, New York Magazine, GQ, and NPR, SSENSE, and more. Other than writing and editing, he likes to read books in the sun.

ABOVE: "Float No. 14," 2023

Artbook @ Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles Bookstore
Eirik Johnson presents 'Leviathan Rising' with Sam Hockley-Smith
Saturday, November 7, 3 PM
917 E. 3rd Street
Los Angeles CA 90013
213-988-7413
RSVP here
Pre-order a signed copy here