Frances Benjamin Johnston Essay ⋆ Education Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Frances Benjamin Johnston, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, became one of the first and most prominent American female photographers in the United States. Her 1899 photographs of children and youth at work in the Washington, D.C., schools were her most significant work that related to American schooling and were honored at an international showing in Paris. They are probably the most extensive portrayals of turn-of-the-century American education that exist.

Initially interested in drawing and painting, she studied at the Academie Julien in Paris. Upon her return to the United States, she settled in Washington, D.C., and transferred her artistic talents to photography. By 1895, she opened a studio in Washington, D.C., and quickly attracted clients from among the city’s social and governmental elite on the basis of the quality of her portraiture. Indeed, she gained a reputation as the “photographer of the American court.” She soon added to her status by becoming a documentary photographer and author of articles, illustrated with her photographs, in popular magazines of the day. During the latter part of her life, she focused her attention on architecture, particularly historic homes and gardens in the southern states.

Johnston’s photographs of D.C. schooling were part of the U.S. exhibit of American education at the 1900 International Exhibition in Paris. They portrayed students and teachers at work in most curriculum areas, academic and vocational, at all school levels from kindergarten to normal school, and in schools in all parts of the city. Photographs showed children studying with ubiquitous schoolroom objects such as chalkboards, maps, and notebooks as well as class groups in ordinarily uncommon settings such as field trips to a creek, a nearby store, and federal buildings. Also, many of these photographs included details of school architecture. Inasmuch as D.C. was racially segregated with separate schools for Blacks and Whites, these photographs illuminate distinctions in the schooling provided for these two groups. For this collection of photographs, exhibition judges awarded Johnston a Gold Medal.

She also gained substantial notice for her photographs of students at Hampton Institute, Carlisle Indian School, and Tuskegee Institute. The Hampton photos were included in a separate and popular Paris Exposition display about American Negroes. Included in this collection were images of students engaged in several types of “industrial” activities (e.g., carpentry) as well as in academic courses. These exceptional photographs won Johnston a special Grand Prix.

Although Johnston’s photographs of American education gained recognition in Europe, they were ignored for many years in the United States. After she donated her papers and extant negatives and photographs to the Library of Congress, her work was discovered by historians of photography and of the history of American education.

Bibliography:

Daniel, P., & Smock, R. (1974). A talent for detail: The photographs of Miss Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1889–1910. New York: Harmony.

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