Hewitt divorced her husband and, in 1913, moved with Johnston to New York City, where they established a home and a photography studio together. Hewitt was married at the time, but clearly there was a spark. In 1901, Johnston met Mattie Edwards Hewitt (1869–1956), also a photographer, in Buffalo, New York. Photography was the through line that would define her life, including private matters. Watts wrote: “Johnston’s catalog of qualities which the successful woman photographer must possess included, but was not limited to, an eye for detail, tact, affability, a ‘genius for hard work,’ overriding patience, an innate sense of one’s uniqueness, discriminating taste, a pleasant and obliging nature, and, above all, a willingness to ‘accept cheerfully any work that comes, doing what there is to do, rather than waiting for the particular kind of work one would prefer.’” Johnston’s confidence and bravura fueled her success: She became an early advocate for women in photography, writing the 1897 essay “What a Woman Can Do with a Camera” in Ladies’ Home Journal. And she finished her education in Paris, where her studies in fine art would enhance the quality of her work behind the camera. Johnston also took photography lessons from the first official photographer and curator of photographs at the Smithsonian Institution, Thomas Smillie. Through her parents’ contacts, she took up photography after receiving a camera as a gift from George Eastman of Eastman Kodak fame. Johnston was born in West Virginia but grew up in Washington, D.C., in comfortable surroundings and with access to a star-studded network: Her mother was a political journalist for the Baltimore Sun, and her father worked for the Treasury Department. Watts, The Huntington’s former curator of photographs and the staff member who cataloged the collection, laid out the details of the Johnston collection in an exceptional 1995 article in the journal History of Photography. For an even brassier self-portrait, she assumed a head-to-toe male persona, complete with mustache and trousers.” One writer has described her as “the most famous lesbian you’ve never heard of.”Īs Henry Huntington became more aware of her work-in particular, her portraits of Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt, among others-he decided in 1924 to buy an extensive portfolio from her: 13 crates containing more than 1,200 hand-selected glass plate negatives and accompanying prints, as well as cyanotype and platinum prints, all for the sum of $3,500 (about $62,000 today). In her right hand is a cigarette, in her left a beer stein. 15, 2021, article: “Undaunted by obstacles faced by others of her gender and happy to rattle the easily shocked, she demonstrated her character early on with an 1896 self-portrait titled The New Woman, in which she sits in profile beside a fireplace, her dress hiked up to reveal a ribbon of petticoat. She was also a force to be reckoned with. Let’s take Pride-wear back to its roots and start shopping from and supporting actual queer creators this year, and to help you get started, here’s a list of queer artists of color you can buy a wide range of art and merch from.For International Women’s Day on March 8, 2018, the New York Times launched “Overlooked,” a series in its obituary section dedicated to honoring the memory of women as well as men of color whose deaths the Times had neglected to write about earlier.Īmong the people featured is Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864–1952), understood to be the nation’s first female photojournalist. The thing is, you don’t need rainbow capitalism in order to deck yourself out with rainbows and queer art and pride gear, because there’s plenty of queer artists out there DIYing it and trying to scrape together a living in this, our queerphobic capitalist hellscape of a society. We always knew rainbow capitalism didn’t mean any of these businesses were actually our friends, but this year, the increasingly hostile attitude towards our community has had them hesitate before throwing our colors on their social media profile pics and pulling Pride collections from the shelves, which has really driven that home. Another year, another Pride month full of corporations pretending they care about us by painting random things in rainbow colors and trying to convince us to buy them.
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