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The Hampton album;: 44 photographs from an album of Hampton Institute
44 pages, Paperback
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 25, 2017
I adore Frances Benjamin Johnston’s photography and especially these incredible photographs of students at the Hampton Institute, 1900. There is not much writing but the photographs I find myself going back to again and again studying composition, the people, the places. Expensive for what you get but worth it if you are a fan.
July 17, 2026
A 1966 book about an exhibit of photos taken by Frances B. Johnston at the Hampton Institute displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Samuel Chapman Armstrong founded the Hampton Institute in a former barracks in 1868 in the era of Reconstruction after the American Civil War. The goal of the institute was to educate formerly enslaved people and Native Americans in trade skills that would allow them to earn a living, get land and a home, and teach “their people” the skills they learned to spread the education. The goal was well intentioned for the period, but it seemed ingrained in a system of opression. Even the 1966 text in the foreword reflects racist overtones, praising it as “an integrated coeducational system of learning-by-doing in the domestic and agricultural arts and crafts, enabling them to teach others to do likewise.” To me, it sounded like the goal was to keep people who had been enslaved in similar work, though they’d now be paid for it.
I won’t profess to be at all well versed on this subject, but it did make me think of Booker T. Washington, who it turned out was a graduate of the institute. He’d found his own school, but would later be criticized for the views he learned there and promoted. They were trying to find practical solutions that would be effective in the society they were living in. I can’t imagine bow difficult that would be. But looking back, it seemed to undermine equality.
The bulk of the book consists of black and white photos taken in 1899 and 1900. They do feel a bit staged, a touch more propaganda than journalism. But there are modern attitudes as well. Namely, the school educated women as well as men.
It starts with a few contrasting sets of photos. An elderly black couple dressed in clothes worn by enslaved people, in a very humble shack with rustic furnishings vs. a black family dressed in formal clothes in a modern middle class home, surrounded by elegant furnishings and decor. Most of the photos after that show classes, starting with a kindergarten class on washing and ironing, and middle classes on American history, geography, arithmetic, and literature. The advanced classes got into skills like butter-making, caring for farm animals, metal working, dress making, and domestic service.
It’s interesting as history, but it would have been more interesting with text commentary on the images. The book has good size images, but you can see these photos on the MOMA website as well as photos not in thr book, at https://www.moma.org/artists/7851-fra....
Samuel Chapman Armstrong founded the Hampton Institute in a former barracks in 1868 in the era of Reconstruction after the American Civil War. The goal of the institute was to educate formerly enslaved people and Native Americans in trade skills that would allow them to earn a living, get land and a home, and teach “their people” the skills they learned to spread the education. The goal was well intentioned for the period, but it seemed ingrained in a system of opression. Even the 1966 text in the foreword reflects racist overtones, praising it as “an integrated coeducational system of learning-by-doing in the domestic and agricultural arts and crafts, enabling them to teach others to do likewise.” To me, it sounded like the goal was to keep people who had been enslaved in similar work, though they’d now be paid for it.
I won’t profess to be at all well versed on this subject, but it did make me think of Booker T. Washington, who it turned out was a graduate of the institute. He’d found his own school, but would later be criticized for the views he learned there and promoted. They were trying to find practical solutions that would be effective in the society they were living in. I can’t imagine bow difficult that would be. But looking back, it seemed to undermine equality.
The bulk of the book consists of black and white photos taken in 1899 and 1900. They do feel a bit staged, a touch more propaganda than journalism. But there are modern attitudes as well. Namely, the school educated women as well as men.
It starts with a few contrasting sets of photos. An elderly black couple dressed in clothes worn by enslaved people, in a very humble shack with rustic furnishings vs. a black family dressed in formal clothes in a modern middle class home, surrounded by elegant furnishings and decor. Most of the photos after that show classes, starting with a kindergarten class on washing and ironing, and middle classes on American history, geography, arithmetic, and literature. The advanced classes got into skills like butter-making, caring for farm animals, metal working, dress making, and domestic service.
It’s interesting as history, but it would have been more interesting with text commentary on the images. The book has good size images, but you can see these photos on the MOMA website as well as photos not in thr book, at https://www.moma.org/artists/7851-fra....
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews