- Poster created by Mills Thompson for Johnston, 1895 Mills Thompson was part of Benjamin’s circle of friends in the mid-1890s before he left for New York. [LOC: LC-J713-8769]
Johnston was among the early illustrators to realize the significant role that photography could play in journalism. [See below]
According to tradition, she asked George Eastman to recommend a camera suitable for press photography. Eastman, founder of the Eastman Kodak Company, had only recently marketed his first Kodak, and he sent Johnston one with his compliments. [Johnston became an agent for Kodak shortly after receiving the camera (Curtis, Ambassador of Progress, 30).]
She studied photography formally under the direction of Thomas William Smillie, head of the Division of Photography of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. With this training, Johnston bravely launched her own career.
- Demorest’s Family Magazine. These three illustrations show how Demorest’s Family Magazine reproduced Johnston’s photography as line engravings.11 [LOC: USZ62-47089]
- Demorest’s Family Magazine used Johnston’s photographs as a basis for several illustrations. [LOC: Top to bottom LC-J688-23; LC-J688-27; LC-J687-32]
For their illustrations, newspapers and magazines in the 1880s relied heavily on zinc engravings, which were relatively easy for an artist to create from a photograph. The half tone process was used in 1850 but did not appear until 1880 in the New York Daily Graphic. In the 1890s the use of zinc engravings declined as a visual medium and they were often mixed with photography in the same illustrated article. In January 1904 the London Daily Mirror became the first daily newspaper in the world to use photography exclusively for its illustrations (Daniel and Smock, 41).
