Sunday Magazine-Cleveland Plain Dealer-“A Photo Finish: Home Turf”

When rock ‘n’ roll photographer Pat Johnson was 8 years old, and growing up in Cleveland, it was his dream to play for the Browns.

In 1972, after high school, he moved to San francisco with $400 in his pocket and pursued a career in photography. He eventuakky got a gig shooting a new band’s first concert. The band was Journey, as it went to platinum albums, fame and untold wealth. Johnson’s career a a photographer rose as well.

Though Johnson became one of the top rock photographers in San Francisco, he remained an avid Browns fan. When Cleveland received the new Browns franchise, Johnson put together a 24×36-inch photographic collage of Browns memorabilia and sent it off to the new management as a present..

“Six months later, my cell phone rang.It was people frfom the new organization saying they loved the collage and could I do three other collages with different memorabilia,” he recalls.

Today. each of the 148 loges in Cleveland Stadium has one of Johnson”s four collages hanging on the wall.

“It;s a lifelong dream to be part of the new Browns,” Johnson says. “This as close as I’m ever going to ge to playing for the Browns and I couldn’t be happier.”

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