The American photographer and photojournalist, Frances Benjamin Johnston, self-portrait, dressed as a man with false mustache, circa 1890 - Frances Benjamin Johnston, full-length portrait, seated in front of fireplace, facing left, holding cigarette in one hand and a beer stein in the other, in her Washington, D.C. studio
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Frances Benjamin Johnston (15/1/1864–16/5/1952), born in West Virginia and raised in a socially prominent family in Washington, D.C., had a privileged introduction to photography. She studied at the Académie Julian in Paris, and received her first camera as a gift from George Eastman, the inventor of the Kodak camera.
Johnston worked as a freelance photojournalist and opened a studio in Washington in 1895, where as official White House photographer she documented the administrations of Presidents Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley (whom she photographed seconds before his assassination), Theodore Roosevelt, and William H. Taft.
Johnston also photographed Natalie Barney. Her famous self-portrait (ca 1896) seated with her skirt pulled up, crossed legs exposed, smoking a cigarette and grasping a beer stein was her radical take on the concept of the "New Woman" being touted in contemporary literature.
She became a vocal advocate for women in photography. In 1897 The Ladies Home Journal published Johnston's article "What a Woman Can Do With a Camera," and she served as curator at the Paris Exposition of 1900 of an exhibition of photographs by twenty-eight women photographers.
Johnston's one-time business partner and presumed lover, Mattie Edwards Hewitt (d. 1956), was a successful freelance home and garden photographer. In 1913 she and Johnston opened a studio together in New York, and in the 1920s they photographed New York architecture together. Johnston continued to photograph until her death in New Orleans at age eighty-eight. The details of Hewitt's later career are unknown. (glbtq.com)
Frances Benjamin Johnston (15/1/1864–16/5/1952), born in West Virginia and raised in a socially prominent family in Washington, D.C., had a privileged introduction to photography. She studied at the Académie Julian in Paris, and received her first camera as a gift from George Eastman, the inventor of the Kodak camera.
Johnston worked as a freelance photojournalist and opened a studio in Washington in 1895, where as official White House photographer she documented the administrations of Presidents Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley (whom she photographed seconds before his assassination), Theodore Roosevelt, and William H. Taft.
Johnston also photographed Natalie Barney. Her famous self-portrait (ca 1896) seated with her skirt pulled up, crossed legs exposed, smoking a cigarette and grasping a beer stein was her radical take on the concept of the "New Woman" being touted in contemporary literature.
She became a vocal advocate for women in photography. In 1897 The Ladies Home Journal published Johnston's article "What a Woman Can Do With a Camera," and she served as curator at the Paris Exposition of 1900 of an exhibition of photographs by twenty-eight women photographers.
Johnston's one-time business partner and presumed lover, Mattie Edwards Hewitt (d. 1956), was a successful freelance home and garden photographer. In 1913 she and Johnston opened a studio together in New York, and in the 1920s they photographed New York architecture together. Johnston continued to photograph until her death in New Orleans at age eighty-eight. The details of Hewitt's later career are unknown. (glbtq.com)
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Two girls from a Washington, D.C., school on a class visit to the Library of Congress, looking at an exhibit of relief or wood engravings, one with her chin on shoulder of the other - American feminist poet and writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
Two girls from a Washington, D.C., school on a class visit to the Library of Congress, looking at an exhibit of relief or wood engravings, one with her chin on shoulder of the other - American feminist poet and writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
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