Frances Benjamin Johnston As A Photographer

Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952) was one of the first American women to achieve prominence as a photographer. Trained at the Académie Julian in Paris, she studied photography upon her return to Washington, D.C., in the mid-1880s and opened a professional studio circa 1890. Her family's social position gave Johnston access to the First Family and leading Washington political figures and launched her career as a photojournalist and portrait photographer. Johnston turned to garden and estate photography in 1910s. [To learn more about Johnston, see the Biographical Overview and Chronology.]
Through copyright deposits, gifts of the photographer and the purchase of material from her estate, the Prints and Photographs Division has formed an extensive