Frances Benjamin Johnston

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frances Benjamin Johnston in her Washington, DC studio 1896
Frances Benjamin Johnston (front) with Mills Thompson (left) and Frank Phister
Self-portrait of Johnston, dressed as a man, circa 1890

Frances "Fannie" Benjamin Johnston (born January 15, 1864 in Grafton , West Virginia , USA , † May 16, 1952 in New Orleans ) was one of the first American photographers and photojournalists .

Life

Johnston was born in Grafton, West Virginia, and raised in Washington, DC , the only surviving child of wealthy, well-connected parents . She studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and the Washington Students League . An independent woman with a strong will, she was an early contributor to magazine and magazine articles before discovering her creative potential through photography . Her first camera was given to her by George Eastman , a close family friend and inventor of the new, lighter-weight Eastman Kodak cameras. She took photography classes and learned darkroom techniques from Thomas Smillie , who at the time was director of photography at the Smithsonian .

Artistic work

Initially, Johnston photographed portraits of friends, family members and local personalities and later worked as a freelance photographer. Her photography tours took her to Europe in the 1890s, where she used her good relationships with Smillie to meet prominent photographers and to acquire new exhibits for the Smithsonian. She gained additional hands-on experience working for Eastman Kodak in Washington DC, routing negatives for exposure and advising clients when their cameras needed repair. She opened her own photography studio in Washington DC in 1895, where she made portraits of many contemporary famous people, including Susan B. Anthony , Mark Twain, and Booker T. Washington . Johnston was well connected through her work in the social elite, was commissioned by magazines to create celebrity portraits and was also widely used as a court photographer. She photographed Admiral George Dewey on the deck of the USS Olympia , Theodore Roosevelt's children playing with their pony at the White House , and the gardens of Edith Wharton's famous mansion near Paris.

Her mother, Frances Antoinette Johnston , had been a congressional journalist for the Baltimore Sun , so she could build on connections with the Washington political scene. In this way, she became the official White House photographer for the terms of Benjamin Harrison , Grover Cleveland , William McKinley , Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft .

She also photographed the well-known US heiress and celebrity Natalie Barney in Paris. Her probably best-known work, however, is her self-portrait of the New Woman with a visible petticoat and a beer mug in her hand. Johnston was a constant defender of the role of women in burgeoning photographic art . The Ladies Home Journal published her article What a Woman Can Do With a Camera in 1897 . Together with Zaida Ben-Yusuf, she was the curator of an exhibition of photographs taken by 28 women photographers during the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris. The exhibition was subsequently shown in Saint Petersburg , Moscow and Washington DC. Johnston traveled extensively for her profession, producing a wide variety of documentary and artistic photos of miners , steel workers, women in the New England mills and seafarers while they were being tattooed . Then there are the social commissioned works.

In 1899 she gained further fame when Hollis Burke Frissell commissioned her to photograph the buildings and students of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Hampton , Virginia , to demonstrate the success of the institute. This photo series, which documents normal school life, is today the most telling work by Johnston. It was also exhibited in the context of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 - in the Exposé nègre .

She photographed events such as world fairs and peace treaty signings, and made the last portrait of US President William McKinley during the Pan-American Exposition in 1901, shortly before his assassination. With her partner Mattie Edwards Hewitt , who was a successful freelance photographer herself, Johnston opened a studio in New York in 1913. They jointly produced several photo series on contemporary New York architecture in the 1920s.

At this time, Johnston became increasingly interested in architectural photography, especially because she liked to document buildings and gardens that were about to decay, were in disrepair or threatened to be demolished. Her photographs are therefore a valuable source for modern architects, historians and preservationists . She exhibited a series of 247 photographs of Fredericksburg , Virginia in 1928 , ranging from the decaying mansions of the rich to the huts of the poor. The exhibition, entitled Pictorial Survey - Old Fredericksburg, Virginia - Old Falmouth and Nearby Places , formed a series of photographic studies of regional architecture from colonial times to circa 1830, and has been described as "a historical treasure and a skilful reflection of the." Atmosphere of a Town in Old Virginia ”.

Their notoriety, which has grown even further with this exhibition, led the University of Virginia to have Johnston photograph the university buildings and the state of North Carolina to document the regional architectural history. Louisiana paid her to keep track of the vast local populations of rapidly deteriorating plantations . The New York Carnegie Corporation commissioned Johnston in 1933 to document the early architecture in Virginia, which later led to a whole series of commissions and photographs in eight other southern states in the United States. All photographs taken in this context have been made available by Johnston to the Library of Congress for free and public use. For her work to preserve old buildings threatened by demolition, she was made an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects . Her collections and photo series have been purchased and exhibited by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art , the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Baltimore Museum of Art .

Although Johnston had to restrict her travel during World War II due to fuel rationing , she continued to photograph until her death at the age of 88.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ National Portrait Gallery: Zaida Ben-Yusuf. New York Photographer. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 2, 2013 ; accessed on September 14, 2011 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.npg.si.edu
  2. ^ Laura Wexler: Black and White and Color . American Photographs at the Turn of the Century. In: Prospects: An Annual of the American Cultural Studies . tape 13 , 1988, pp. 343 (English).
  3. ↑ Anne Maxell: Montrer l'Autre . Franz Boas et les soeurs Gerhard. In: Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, Gilles Boetsch et al. (Ed.): Zoos humains . aux temps des exhibitions humaines. Découverte, Paris 2004, ISBN 978-2-7071-4401-0 , pp. 331-339 (French).

Web links

Commons : Frances Benjamin Johnston  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Johnston, Frances Benjamin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Johnston, Fannie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH January 15, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Grafton , West Virginia , USA
DATE OF DEATH May 16, 1952
Place of death New Orleans