Johnston, Frances Benjamin, 1864-1952

Portrait photographer, photojournalist, architectural photographer, and illustrator.

From the description of Frances Benjamin Johnston papers, 1855-1956 (bulk 1890-1945). (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 71174615

Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952) was a trained artist who turned her talents to photography and became one of the first prominent female photojournalists in the United States. After studying art at the Academie Julian in Paris, France and at the Art Students' League in Washington, D.C., Johnston took up an interest in journalism and began doing illustrations for newspapers in 1885. She eventually turned to photography because she thought it was the more accurate machine and studied under Thomas William Smillie, head of the Division of Photography at the Smithsonian Institution. During her long and successful career, Johnston took tens of thousands of photographs of scenes and events all over the United States with an emphasis on Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

From the description of Frances Benjamin Johnston collection, 1935-1936. WorldCat record id: 42910857

Biography

Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952) was a photographer whose prodigious career spanned six decades and whose lens captured a vast array of topics. A woman of immense drive and energy, she is most commonly referred to as the first female photojournalist. However, she was also a charter member of the Photo-Secession, exhibiting her pictorialist work in a wide variety of salons and shows; she was a businesswoman who operated her own Washington, DC portrait studio and later, in New York City, a studio devoted to architectural photography; she was the recipient of awards and accolades and served as a mentor -particularly through her published essays and private correspondence -to countless women who aspired to her profession; and she was a peripatetic soul whose travels in the United States and abroad resulted in a tremendous body of work concentrating primarily on architecture and gardens (the fruit of her later years). The Frances B. Johnston Collection has as its focus the portrait work of Johnston's earlier Washington years.

From the guide to the Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection, 1895-1906, (The Huntington Library)

Frances Benjamin Johnston was born 15 January 1864 in Rochester, New York. Her family later moved to Washington, District of Columbia. In 1882, at the age of 18, she attended Notre Dame Convent in Govanston, Maryland. The following year Johnston departed for Paris, France, to study studied art at the Académie Julian. After her return from Paris in 1885, Johnston enrolled in the Art Students' League in Washington.

Johnston's interest in art shifted to journalism, her mother's occupation, and she began to make illustrations for newspapers. She eventually turned to photography because she thought it was the more accurate machine and studied under Thomas William Smillie, head of the Division of Photography at the Smithsonian Institution. Johnston worked on many important projects during her storied career, including the Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South between 1933 and 1940. The survey was a systematic record of the early buildings and gardens in Maryland, Virgina, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, and Mississippi.

Johnston's original negatives for the project are at the Library of Congress, which has become the principal repository of her writings and photographs. The Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection at the Library of Congress includes approximately 20,000 photographs and 3,700 glass and film negatives. Images in the collection span the period 1864-1940, but the majority date between 1897 and 1927. In 1936, the American Council of Learned Societies paid Johnston $3,500 to photograph early North Carolina architecture.

She had three mentors for the project: from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Albert Ray Newsome, North Carolina historian and former history department chair and Howard Odum, sociologist of the American South, professor, and founder of the Sociology Department, the School of Public Welfare, the Department of City and Regional Planning, and the Institute for Research in Social Science; and from Duke University, William Boyd, history professor and first Director of the Libraries.

Frances Benjamin Johnston died in 1952. Source: The Woman Behind the Lens: the Life and Work of Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1864-1952, by Bettina Berch. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000.

From the guide to the Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection, 1935-1938, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. North Carolina Collection.)