In 2022, Johnston received a Canada Council for the Arts grant for her project “Freddy and Ceydie” which is about her 12-year-old daughter and a 75-year-old man who share the same donor liver. With the grant, Johnston was able to pursue her intent on raising awareness around deceased organ donation throughout Canada. This work was also exhibited in two photography festivals--Cortona, Italy and Recontres de la Photographie en Gaspésie. For her 2025 book version of “Freddy and Ceydie”, Johnston was shortlisted for the Henri Cartier-Bresson Self-Published Photobook 2025 Award.
In 2022, Johnston received a Risograph Book Publication Residency at the Penumbra Foundation for the images of her family made during Covid. To emulate the slowed down pace during the periods of lockdown and as a hark to the women in her life who darned, sewed, and stitched, she bound each book by hand. Currently, this body of work is being exhibited in Bruges, Belgium at the Concertgebouw.
Her third body of work, “a butterfly kiss”, was shortlisted and eventually shown at the Photographia Calabria Festival in 2024. It was also recognized by Urbanautica Institute Awards in 2024 for the category “Nature, Environment and Perspectives”.
Johnston lives in Belgium running a bed and breakfast with her husband and three dogs.
Cince Johnston’s photography explores intimate family narratives alongside a focus on
storytelling for change with occasional sojourns into the world of street documentary. As
a photographer who is a mother of five, Johnston is concerned about the landscape of
the future, and the possible irony that what she creates in her photographic practice
could be part of a greater cycle of micro-destructions contributing to the ailing earth.
With her residency at VUPhoto in 2024, she has tried to create a more environmentally
responsible workflow to her bookmaking practice.