Johanna Lawrenson is a photographer and organizer who has spent her life between New York City and the Thousand Islands, along the St. Lawrence River on the U.S.–Canada border.
She was born in New York City and raised by her mother, writer Helen Lawrenson, and her father, Jack Lawrenson, a union organizer. Immersed in the political and cultural revolutions of the 1960s, she began her career as a model in New York and Paris, later joining the underground art scene of the decade.
In the early 1970s, Johanna left the U.S. for Mexico, where she met writer and activist Abbie Hoffman, one of the famed “Chicago 8.” Together they lived underground in Mexico, Guatemala, Europe, and eventually settled in the Thousand Islands. There, they co-founded Save The River!, an organization that successfully fought U.S. Army Corps plans that threatened the St. Lawrence River’s ecosystem.
Since Hoffman’s death in 1989, Johanna has continued supporting environmental advocacy and mentoring young organizers around the world.