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Frances Benjamin Johnston Photograph Collection

Wigwam, Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1929-1935 Heathville Tavern, Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1929-1935 Corbin Hall, Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1929-1935

Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952) was one of the first American women to achieve distinction as a photographer. Although renowned for her work as a photojournalist and as a portraitist, Johnston's greatest achievement as a photographer was her work to document the colonial architecture of the American South. From 1933 through 1940, with financial backing from the Carnegie Corporation, Johnston set about to record the vernacular architecture of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Maryland, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida and Mississippi. During her work in Virginia from 1933 to 1935, Johnston established close professional ties with Edmund S. Campbell, then the head of the Architecture Department at the University of Virginia. An outcome of Campbell working as an advisor to Johnston on the Virginia Survey was the deposit of 948 of Johnston's original photographs for the purpose of study and research at the University. Johnston's intention was not to make images of the grand architecture of the region, but rather to preserve a record of the barns, log cabins, inns, mills and outbuildings of humble origins. Her photographs are breathtaking examples of the American built environment that has been largely erased from today's architectural landscape.

For further information about Johnston's Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South, go to: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/039.html

For more information about the Frances Benjamin Johnston Photographic Collection at the University of Virginia, please contact: emg2j@virginia.edu

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