LEVIATHAN RISING
Leviathan Rising is Eirik Johnson's exploration of oceanic trade, environmental fragility, and the beastly machinery that carries cargo through uncertain waters. From a kayak, Johnson photographs the abstracted spaces beneath the hulls of massive transoceanic barges as they idle in the Duwamish, a deeply polluted river ecosystem in Seattle that flows into the Salish Sea, before threading the Inside Passage to and from Alaskan waters and to ports along the Pacific Rim. Beneath these hulls, new architectural spaces emerge and scale and light distort; a quiet vertigo sets in. Angular steel ribs jut out from the sterns and bows overhead, while sunlight radiates geometric patterns across their oil-slicked and rusted skins. Hidden portals uncover layers of salt and sunbaked runoff, vestiges of repeated oceanic journeys. Each layer of sediment, diesel, tar, and marine life that collects on the hulls is a marker of their voyages and of the broader system of oceanic trade.
The project also includes Float, a series of daguerreotype photograms, made in ongoing collaboration with artist Daniel Carrillo. These luminous, silver-plated works depict glass fishing floats once used by Japanese fishermen to suspend their nets — spheres that broke free of their lines a century ago and drifted on ocean currents to the shores of the Pacific Northwest, arriving here as unintended cargo of their own. The resulting works evoke celestial bodies or cellular organisms.
Finally, the project features two immersive sound works composed from aquatic field recordings made underwater in the Duwamish. The twang of ship welding melds with the pulsing heartbeat of a distant propeller — an acoustic map of one more, unseen layer of human impact on the Salish Sea.
All of this work is brought together in the new monograph Leviathan Rising (MW Editions, September 2026).
Leviathan Rising, published by MW Editions, September 2026
Killer Whale
Western Venture
Madison Rose
Hawaii Trader
SeaTac
M.V. Los Angeles
Alaska Provider
Freedom
St. Elias
Noke
Santos (three panel triptych)
Pt. No Point
Mud Dog
Aspiration
Dutch Rudder
Salvation
Dioskouroi
Sea Hawk
Seabeck
Steel Trader
Atlas
Hui Mana
Kamankani
Western Carrier (two panel diptych)
Constellation (four panel quadriptych)
Pacific Lifter
Five Columns
Swiftwater
In 2023, Johnson presented LEVIATHAN RISING, a site-specific photographic and sound-based installation presented within the historic Georgetown Steam Plant in Seattle, Washington. The installation featured large-scale photographic projections, a multi-track sound piece made from recordings beneath the surface of the Duwamish River, and works from Float, a series of daguerreotype photograms made in collaboration with Daniel Carrillo.
a short film documenting Leviathan Rising by Brad Curran and Andrew Burton
The installation encompassed the structure’s massive turbine hall as well as the boiler house, where coal was used to generate power for two Curtis steam turbines. Completed in 1907, the Steam Plant powered the city’s burgeoning electrical grid and trolley car system. The plant was originally built on the banks of the Duwamish River, providing a continuous loop of water to heat into steam as well as to cool the condensers. However, only 10 years later, the Duwamish was dramatically straightened for industrial maritime passage, thereby leaving the Georgetown Steam Plant to pump in water from nearly half a mile away.
In this sense, LEVIATHAN RISING reconnected the Steam Plant to the river from which it once drew power. The sound piece filled the grand acoustic chamber of the turbine hall with layers of mysterious audio recorded beneath the surface of the river using an underwater hydrophone. Meanwhile, in the long expanse of the Boiler House, photographic images made beneath the bows and sterns of the trans-oceanic barges that port on the Duwamish, were projected at grand-scale.
Also on view were works from Float, a series of full plate daguerreotypes made in an ongoing collaborative partnership with artist Daniel Carrillo. These celestial-like photograms depict glass fishing floats used by Japanese fishermen in the early 20th Century to suspend their nets in the Pacific Ocean. Often breaking free from their netting, the spheres would float along with the trade winds and currents, at times reaching the shores of Pacific Northwest.
Leviathan Rising sound work filling the Turbine Hall.
Short Feature on Leviathan Rising on the Seattle Channel.