Frances Benjamin Johnston: The Hampton Album


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    Deluxe Edition.

    25cm x 35cm. 344 pages, black and white photographs. Full leather, white lettering, pictorial onlay.

    “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.” (publisher’s blurb)

    . Fine Condition.

    SOLD

    SKU: 0016642 Categories: ,