![[Frances Benjamin Johnston with camera on balcony of Treasury Building, Washington, D.C., 1888]](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20081207213409im_/http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/cph/3b30000/3b38000/3b38200/3b38282t.gif) Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection
Photographs and papers of Frances Benjamin Johnston
Collection digitized? Yes,
a portion for which reproduction has
been requested are available in the
Prints & Photographs
Online Catalog. Selected
images are included here to give
a sample of the collection.
The Library of Congress is the principal repository of the
writings and photographs of Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952),
one of the first American women to achieve prominence as a
photographer.
Trained at the Académie Julian in Paris, she studied photography upon
her return to Washington, D.C., in the mid-1880's and opened a professional studio
circa 1890. Her family's social position gave Miss Johnston access to the First
Family and leading Washington political figures and launched her career as a
photojournalist and portrait photographer. One of her scoops as a correspondent
for the Bain News Service was to board Admiral Dewey's
flagship with a letter of introduction from Theodore Roosevelt and interview
the "Hero of Manila Bay" en route from the Philippines. Miss Johnston turned
to garden and estate photography in 1910s. She was one of the first contributors
to the Library's Pictorial Archives of Early American Architecture and
executed a systematic survey of southern architecture with the support of the Carnegie
Corporation.
Prints and Photographs Division Holdings
Through copyright deposits, the gifts of the photographer and
the purchase of material from her estate, the Prints
and
Photographs Division has formed an extensive collection of Miss Johnston's
documentary assignments and architectural studies. The collection includes about
20,000 photographic prints and 3,700 glass and film negatives. Images in the
collection span the period, 1864-1940, but the majority date between 1897 and
1927. Among the photographs from Johnston's early career are her coverage of
American world's fairs; coal mining; the White House; openings of Congress; Admiral
Dewey; and Progressive era educational efforts, including a survey of Washington,
D.C., schools and such minority educational institutions as the Hampton Institute
and the Tuskegee Institute. The collection also includes photographs collected
by Johnston, including images of family and friends and works by other women
photographers. Photographic prints have been grouped by subject matter, and these
groups are listed in both the Divisional card catalog and the Prints
and Photographs Online Catalog. Some individual images for which copy photography
has been requested can also be found in the online catalog. Architectural material
in the Carnegie Survey of Architecture of the South and in the Pictorial Archives
of Early American Architecture are cataloged in separate card indexes in the
Prints and Photographs Reading Room.
Manuscript Division Holdings
Miss Johnston's personal papers in the Manuscript
Division span the years 1885 to 1953 and consist primarily of correspondence.
Also included are memoranda, articles, notes, the manuscript of her book Early
Architecture of North Carolina (1941), and miscellaneous material relating
to her photography of southern architecture. The division has prepared an unpublished
finding aid for the 17,000-item collection. The papers have been microfilmed.
Note: Information for this entry was compiled in the late
1970's for inclusion in: Special Collections in the Library of Congress:
A Selective Guide. Compiled by Annette Melville. Washington, D.C.: Library
of Congress, 1980. The entry was revised in 1998.
Pete Daniel and Raymond Smock. A Talent for Detail: The Photographs
of Miss Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1889-1910 (New York: Harmony Books,
[1974] 182 p. TR140.-J64A34 1974). (Illustrated with photographs from the
collection.)
U.S. Library of Congress. Reference Department. Guide to the Special
Collections of Prints & Photographs in the Library of Congress, compiled
by Paul Vanderbilt. Washington, 1955. 200 p. NE53.W3A52, no.390, 391.
The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections. 1959/61+
Washington, Library of Congress Z6620.U5N366-1426
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