Virginia Changemakers
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Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864 - 1952)

VWH 2003 Johnston.jpg

Locality

Fredericksburg

Occupation

Photographer

Biography

Born in West Virginia, Frances Benjamin Johnston (January 16, 1864–May 16, 1952) grew up in Washington, D.C., where her father worked for the government and her mother was a newspaper correspondent. After attending a nearby convent school, she studied drawing and painting in Paris. She returned to the United States in 1885 and planned to become a writer and use her art training to illustrate her stories. Intrigued by photography, she worked for a commercial photographer and established her own studio in the 1890s. She incorporated elements of journalism and art into her work, developing the distinctive style for which she would become famous.

Johnston established her reputation taking portraits of the prominent and political elite in Washington, D.C., but she also photographed factory workers and coal miners. She was commissioned in 1899 to photograph the students and campus of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later Hampton University), and the images were displayed at the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris, where she also organized an exhibition of female photographers. Freethinking and strong-willed, Johnston advocated women's inclusion in photography, a field dominated by men.

In 1927 Johnston photographed Chatham, an eighteenth-century manor on the Rappahannock River. Intrigued by early southern architecture, she began taking pictures of historic buildings in Fredericksburg and the surrounding area, and also provided the images for Colonial Churches in Virginia (1930). During the 1930s she received grants to document hundreds of Virginia's historic structures, as well as those in other southern states. Thousands of Johnston's photographs are part of the collections at the Library of Congress.


2003 Virginia Women in History honoree, Virginia Foundation for Women and Delta Kappa Gamma Society International.

File Citation(s)

Image Courtesy of the Library of Virginia.