Frances Johnston Photographing the Biltmore Estate, 1938
Johnston standing beside her view camera looking towards the Biltmore Estate mansion in the background. Frances Fannie Benjamin Johnston (January 15, 1864 - May 16, 1952) was one of the earliest American female photographers and photojournalists. She was given her first camera by George Eastman, a close friend of the family, and inventor of the Eastman Kodak cameras. She received training in photography and dark-room techniques from Thomas Smillie, director of photography at the Smithsonian. She took portraits of many famous contemporaries but, her most famous work is her self-portrait of the liberated New Woman, petticoats showing and beer stein in hand. In the 1920s she became increasingly interested in photographing architecture, motivated by a desire to document buildings and gardens which were falling into disrepair or about to be redeveloped and lost. Her photographs remain an important resource for modern architects, historians and conservationists. She died in 1952 at the age of 88. Biltmore Estate is a large private estate and tourist attraction near Asheville, North Carolina. Biltmore House, the main residence, is a ChC teauesque-style mansion built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895 and is the largest privately owned house in the United States. Still owned by George Vanderbilt's descendants, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the Gilded Age
