Title: Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection,

Date (inclusive): 1895-1906

Collection number: photCL 352

Creator: Johnston, Frances Benjamin, 1864-1952

Extent: 1276 single photographs in 12 boxes; Approximately 1217 (8x10 in.) glass plate negatives in 59 boxes and 61 (11x14 and 14x17 in.) glass plate negatives in 6 boxes

Repository: The Huntington Library

Language: English.

Purchased by Henry E. Huntington from Frances B. Johnston, 1924.

Collection is open to qualified researches by prior application through the Reader Services Department. For more information please go to following URL. 

In order to quote from, publish, or reproduce any of the manuscripts or visual materials, researchers must obtain formal permission from the office of the Library Director. In most instances, permission is given by the Huntington as owner of the physical property rights only, and researchers must also obtain permission from the holder of the literary rights In some instances, the Huntington owns the literary rights, as well as the physical property rights. Researchers may contact the appropriate curator for further information.

[Identification of item], Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

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.

The photographs arrived at the Huntington in 1924 when, after persistent negotiations, she sold some 1200 glass plate negatives and her "catalogue set of blue prints" to Henry E. Huntingotn and his library for several thousand dollars.* In her correspondence with the librarian, George Watson Cole, Johnston described the collection as "portraits of famous men and women and historic events...through the administrations of Benj. Harrison, Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt and Taft" which she deemed to possess "ultimate historic value and interest." Indeed, this collection of cyanotypes (with some gelatin and finished, platinum prints) focuses largely on the stream of socialites, diplomats, Presidents, senators, reformers, Supreme Court Justices, artists, authors and other important figures who flowed through Johnston's well-appointed studio at the turn-of-the-century. In addition there is an excellent series of views, largely interior shots, of Washington's embassies, legations and famous residences which Johnston photographed for a series of articles in Demorest's Family Magazine.The remainder of the collection is comprised of a sundry group of images including copies of Matthew Brady's daguerreotypes (most unidentified) belonging to the War Department, various treaties and official documents, a set of Abraham Lincoln ephemera intended to illustrate Ida Tarbell's Life of Lincoln and some views of the Bell Telephone. What follows is a general description of the photographs in the Johnston Collection according to their numerical and subject arrangement.

*For more detailed information about the events surrounding this transaction, please refer to an article by Jennifer A. Wattsentitled "The Frances Benjamin Johnston Portrait Collection at the Huntington Library." History of Photography. Vol. 19, No. 3. August 1995,252-262.