Frances Benjamin Johnston: The Hampton Album (Deluxe Edition)

Description

Comprised of 159 extraordinary platinum plates, Frances Benjamin Johnston's Hampton Album documents life at the Hampton Institute marking a pivotal moment in this historically black university's history . Frances Benjamin Johnston (American, 1864-1952), one of the first women in America to work as a professional photographer, was commissioned in 1899 to photograph the Hampton Institute, then a thirty year old institution dedicated to the practical and academic education of freed slaves and Native Americans. What became known as the Hampton Album - comprised of 159 platinum plates exhibited in 1900 at the Exposition Universelle in Paris - is Johnston's signature work, and has become a touchstone for contemporary historians and artists. The leather-bound album was discovered serendipitously by Lincoln Kirstein in a Washington, D.C. bookstore during World War II and donated to MoMA in 1965.

Sarah Hermanson Meister is a Curator in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Sarah Hermanson Meister is a Curator in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Johnston's photographs reveal the tension between ambition and assimilation that has long defined the place of everyone "othered" in American life -- the misguided belief of exceptionalism that posits if you pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you can climb the ladder to success. As the first female photojournalist, Johnston may have understood this mission better than most.--Sara Rosen "Feature Shoot"