Timeline

The life and career of Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1864–1952

1864

Born in Grafton, West Virginia on January 15

1883

Begins studying art at the Academie Julian in Paris (through 1885)

1888

Receives a roll-film camera from family friend George Eastman and turns to photography

1894

Opens her own portrait studio in Washington, D.C.

1897

Publishes the essay "What a Woman Can Do with a Camera" in the Ladies' Home Journal

1900

Organizes an exhibition of American women photographers shown in connection with the Paris exposition; completes the Hampton Institute series

1901

Makes what is believed to be the last portrait of President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition

1913

Opens a New York City studio with Mattie Edwards Hewitt, specializing in garden and architectural photography

1933

Receives the first of a series of Carnegie Corporation grants to document early Southern architecture

1940

Buys a house in the French Quarter of New Orleans

1952

Dies in New Orleans on May 16 at the age of eighty-eight

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1930s

57 photographs from the 1930s

Frances B. Johnston at the Wheel Inn, Morganton, N.C, North Carolina, 1938 [Frances Benjamin Johnston, full-length portrait, standing in front…, 1935 [Frances Benjamin Johnston with large tripod camera, in front of the…, 1936 [Frances Benjamin Johnston, photographer, posed sitting with peonies…, 1938

1940s

6 photographs from the 1940s

Frances B. Johnston, 1946, in New Orleans, La My patio court, March 21 to May, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1946 [Frances Benjamin Johnston's cats, Herman and Vermin, seated on brick…, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1945 [Frances B. Johnston in garden in New Orleans with "Pops" Whitesell,…, 1945
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