Maria Elizabeth Ausherman - The Photographic Legacy of Frances Benjamin Johnston

The idea for this book first came about during a conversation with John Linley, an architect and professor at the School of Environmental Design of the University of Georgia and a family friend. He was talking about how his friend and colleague, Frederick Doveton Nichols, at that time a young architect and architectural historian at the University of Virginia, had the opportunity to work with this great photographer who was conducting a survey of historic buildings in Virginia. Nichols was amazed at how she would adjust the aperture, press the button to expose the subject, and then casually pour herself a shot of whiskey and empty the glass before closing the shutter of the camera. The photographer was none other than Frances Benjamin Johnston, who knew how to take pictures so well that the manual exposure process had become intuitive for her.

After talking with John Linley, I browsed through some of the publications showcasing Johnstons work, particularly The Early Architecture of North Carolina(1941), Plantations of the Carolina Low Country(1945), and The Early Architecture of Georgia(1957), which was a collaboration between Nichols and Johnston and the foundation of Frederick Nichols well-deserved reputation. Realizing how strikingly beautiful Johnstons photographs are and how little has been written about them, I decided that Johnstons work would be the focus of my research.

Many people helped me with my work. I would like to thank Susan Morris at the University of Georgia library; Marilyn Ibach, Mary M. Ison, and C. Ford Peatross at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division; Keith Longiotti and Fred Stipe at the University of North Carolina Library for their professional assistance; the members of the Garden Club of Georgia for the Cherokee Rose Award; Margaret Growe, Erich Schneiderman, Cathy Minaudo, Lowell Angel, Mike DAnna, and Steven Taylor for their editing and computer assistance; and John Maynard, English professor at New York University, and Ian Firth, professor emeritus of landscape architecture at the University of Georgia, for their fine-tuning. I am grateful for the guidance of Lew Andrews, professor of art history at the University of Hawaii, whose knowledge about photography is unsurpassable; and for the support of Heather Turci, Eli Bortz, Susan Albury and Dennis Lloyd at the University Press of Florida, and the books designer, Louise OFarrell. Most of all, I would like to thank my parents, Charles and Rieneke Ausherman, Mary Jane Chapman, my lovely daughters, Chloe Amelia Chapman and Lydia Marie Chapman, and Bill Chapman, American Studies professor at the University of Hawaii, who has done so much in the field of historic preservation.