The Hampton Album, Museum of Modern Art photo by Frances B. Johnston

Description: Johnston, Frances Benjamin, Lincoln Kirstein and Museum of Modern Art (New York N.Y.) (1966). The Hampton Album: 44 Photographs from an Album of Hampton Institute. New York, Museum of Modern Art: distributed by Doubleday Garden City N.Y. Credited as the first female photojournalist in the United States, Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952) was commissioned In 1899 to photograph the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Hampton, Virginia. This institute was a school for young African American and Native American men and women, founded shortly after the end of the Civil War. The mesmerizing depictions captured in the Hampton Album offer a window into daily life for Hampton students. These plates elegantly depict the industrial and agricultural skills taught to students at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later known as Hampton Institute and finally Hampton University). Johnston’s photographs were designed to illustrate Hampton’s educational philosophy of vocational training in order to achieve economic advancement — a practice that W.E.B. DuBois argued was far too limited a vision for the newly-liberated yet systematically disenfranchised group. The work was first exhibited in the American Negro Exhibit at the Exposition Universelle in Paris as part of the U.S. government’s efforts to rebrand its international image following the decimation of the Confederacy during the Civil War. In 1965, the collector and cultural impresario Lincoln Kirstein gifted The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) an anonymous, old, and scuffed leather-bound album. The album, affectionately referred to as the Hampton Album, bears no markings on its cover, and its contents provide no clues to identify its maker. Over several weeks in December 1899 and January 1900, Frances Benjamin Johnston created a series of 159 luxurious platinum plates that came to be known as the Hampton Album. Check out my other listings of African American, African, Oceanic, Native American art and art history, and other regions of world art and cultures for additional rare finds.

Price: 23.49 USD

Location: Boone, North Carolina

End Time: 2024-11-27T02:53:18.000Z

Shipping Cost: 4.49 USD