Former RJ photographer wins Emmy Award

John Locher, a former photographer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, won an Emmy Award for his video “Double Helix” on Saturday at the 40th Annual National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Pacific Southwest Chapter ceremonies in Carlsbad, Calif.

He won the Video Essay (Single Camera Only) category.

Work by Review-Journal staffers also was nominated in two other categories:

Delivering a New Downtown, a half-hour special report produced by the newspaper and also broadcast by Vegas PBS, was nominated in the Community/Public Service Program or Special category. Individuals nominated were Justin Yurkanin, Michael Quine, Benjamin Spillman and Jason Bean.

Bean was also nominated in the Arts/Entertainment Single Story or Series category for “Herb Hardesty, A Life of Music,” a short report on the the jazz great.

Locher’s video featured Johanna Sapakie, an aerialist, acrobat and dancer in “Michael Jackson One.” She had a replica of a DNA double helix built and installed in her home. She was to perform publicly for the first time with the double helix in December.

Sapakie was featured in a column by Doug Elfman on Nov. 30.

Locher was a photographer at the Review-Journal at the time he produced the video. He now works for the Associated Press in Las Vegas.