Frances Benjamin Johnston Photographed Grand Estates. Then She Turned to Ordinary Buildings.

Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864–1952) is described by JSTOR Daily as one of the great women photographers in American history. She photographed grand American estates, working for families like the Astors and the Vanderbilts. Later in her career she turned her eye to vernacular architecture, capturing a quickly disappearing built landscape. That turn is the interesting part. A photographer whose standing was built on the grandest houses of an era spent her later work on ordinary buildings that were going — a record of the sort of structure that rarely gets an archive until it needs one.