And now, class, a bit of analysis.

'Look at this picture,' I told Elektra. 'What do you see?'

'Er, a lady and two men, in the 1890s.'

'What do you notice about them?'

She thought. 'That lady's handmuff looks like a hedgehog.'

Getting social analysis out of Elektra is difficult. She zeroes in on the natural history detail, every time. If you showed her a portrait of FDR, she'd notice what Fala was doing. The animals win, every time.

I persisted. 'But what about the people?'

Elektra wrinkled her forehead. 'I guess it's a very respectable woman and her two disreputable brothers.'

I nodded. 'Keep looking at the photo. Now, what changes when I tell you that all three of the people in the picture are women?'

Her eyes widened. 'Ah,' she said simply.

Yes. Ah, indeed. Frances Benjamin Johnston, the guy on the right, was a pioneer woman photographer. In fact, she was the official White House photographer for several administrations. She was a liberated – and liberating – person in her own right, and she had a few things to say about our views on gender.

Ms Johnston said these things by using images. Do you see how knowing the gender of the three subjects in the picture tells you something about the society they lived in? How important were clothes to a person's representation in the world? How did it affect self-image?

Here's another didactic image experience. Study this self-portrait by Frances Johnston. Our first reaction is, 'Say what?' That's because it's self-consciously posed. But look at the details. Johnston is sitting with her legs crossed – in those days, only men did that, at least in public. You can see her petticoats. (Those are the white, ruffly bits under the skirt.) Shocking for the time. This woman is unconventional.

She's also being aggressive. She's leaning forward, challenging. She's smoking. She also has a beer stein in her hand. In other words, she's claiming territory the society reserved for the other gender. The one, apparently, she could visually belong to, as long as she dressed differently.

Elektra's comment, 'I love her blouse. That's cool.' A post-feminist comment, if ever I heard one.

Frances Benjamin Johnston was not only a pioneer, but also a benefactor to us all. On her retiremenent, she donated 20,000 photographs to the Library of Congress, to be used free gratis by everyone. Her generosity inspired another woman photographer, Carol M Highsmith, to undertake her amazing project of capturing images from all fifty states of the US. The Highsmith Collection – again, free to use – is one of the reasons why all of us on the internet are so grateful to the Library of Congress for our visual content.

These pictures do more than dress up the page. They record, preserve, and teach. By studying them, we can become wiser about the way things work. If we want to make changes, it's a good place to start.

We owe a vote of thanks to Frances Johnston and Carol Highsmith for their generosity in sharing their talents. When we contribute our writing, art, or photography to h2g2, we're following their example. By sharing our time and experience, we are adding to the store of free knowledge available to the world at large. Keep it up, Researchers!

Fact and Fiction by Dmitri Gheorgheni Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

06.01.14 Front Page

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