Tag: portrait, Porträt, retrato, ritratto, portret, retrat, Bildnis

Johnston as New Woman · 1896

Frances Benjamin Johnston ~ Self-portrait in the studio as a New Woman, 1896 (detail)

In this self-portrait the photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston poses as an independent ‘new woman.’ On the mantelpiece are six portraits she took of men (from left to right): poet Bliss Carman; A. N. Brown, likely the librarian at the U.S. Naval Academy; Henry Guston Rogers, likely the inventor and playwright Henry Gustave Rogers; architect James Rush Marshall; Smithsonian librarian Frank Phister; and L. M. McCormick, a photographer and member of the Capital Camera Club. [quoted from Library of Congress] permalink

[Frances Benjamin Johnston, full-length portrait, seated in front of fireplace, facing left, holding cigarette in one hand and a beer stein in the other, in her Washington DC studio], 1896

Johnston crossdressing ca. 1890

[Frances Benjamin Johnston, full-length self-portrait dressed as a man with false moustache, posed with bicycle, facing left]; 1890-1900
src Library of Congress
[Frances Benjamin Johnston (right), full-length self-portrait dressed as a man with false moustache, posed with two unidentified women, one of whom is also dressed as a man]; 1880-1900 | src Library of Congress

According to Shorpy ─in this website the photograph is titled “Reverso”─ Frances Benjamin Johnston is posing here with two similarly cross-dressing friends. The “lady” is a gent identified in a few other FBJ photos as the illustrator Mills Thompson.