The Hampton album - Frances Benjamin Johnston

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.