Jazz Age photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston (1885–1971), the official photographer of the Ziegfeld Follies well-known at the time for his soft-focus posed female nudes, has been largely overlooked in most modern writing on photography—perhaps because he was a commercial advertising and portrait photographer, or perhaps because he clung to a Pictorialist style that had long since faded from fashion. The spectacular show whose performers he recorded was named for theater impresario, Florenz Ziegfeld (1867–1932), a daring and charismatic showman from Chicago, who debuted his first Ziegfeld Follies on June 8, 1907, at the Jardin de Paris, located on the roof of the New York Theatre. Based on the Folies Bergère, a cabaret music hall in Paris, his elaborate theatre productions featured what were billed as “the most beautiful girls in America.” The Ziegfeld Follies featured stunning chorus performers commonly known as Ziegfeld girls, usually dressed in elaborate costumes by recognized designers. His showgirls, who bared more flesh than ever before, had a reputation for being taller and slimmer than earlier performers. Many future starlets gained their start with Ziegfeld, including Marion Davies, Lillian Lorraine, Barbara Stanwyck, Mae Murray, and Gloria Swanson. In the Follies, the showgirls were not allowed to move, as the nude in motion was considered too provocative. Losing the restrictive corsets of Victorian fashion, the girls were slim, physically active, and wore loosely draped clothing—a modern silhouette.
Relatively little is known for certain about Johnston’s life, which is shrouded in periods of mystery, as accounts vary among sources. Born in Manhattan in 1885, he studied art at the National Academy of Design in New York alongside Norman Rockwell.1 After graduating from art school in 1908, Johnston worked for the Sarony studios in New York as a glass plate retouch artist and photographer. Sometime between 1915 and 1917, he left to begin working for Ziegfeld. By the end of the twenties, Johnston was charging up to $1,200 per sitting.
Johnston opened his first studio at 57th Street and Sixth Avenue, but after a fire in 1921, he moved into the Hotel des Artistes. In his studio, he staged various backdrops—one with a tapestry, one with a Japanese bird screen, and another with a moveable white wall—so that the model could rotate from station to station to achieve different effects. As his photographs became more popular, he was able to afford the lighting equipment used on silent film sets. Johnston worked with a bulky Century Universal camera with 11 x 14-inch glass plates. After exposure, they were contact printed on photographic paper. Johnston’s wife, Doris Gernon-Johnston, whom he met at art school, worked alongside him, retouching his photographs after the plates had been developed. The ethereal beauty Johnston achieved in his photographs lay in his development process. He set up an easel in the darkroom and painted a developer chemical onto the photograph with an artist’s brush in order to soften hard edges and produce a glazed background. A number of his photographs were published on magazine and sheet music covers. Johnston recalled, “Ziegfeld showgirls, movie and stage stars, society girls and professional models have brought probably twenty distinct types of beauties before my camera. Yet, if I were asked to name the one I considered lovelier than all the rest, I should have to acknowledge defeat…. True beauty knows no tape-measured size or standard coloring.”2
Johnston often drew preliminary sketches before posing his models, and when necessary painted their faces with make-up. Employing elaborate furniture and tapestries, he created a refined environment for his models, creatively draping them in silks, laces, and velvets, eventually gaining the nickname “Mr. Drape.” Johnston created erotic fantasies and pushed the limits of the accepted standard of suggestive nudity: “I tried to suggest nudity, but in such a way that it couldn’t be seen. It’s not what you do with a picture that makes it beautiful, it’s how you do it. It’s the effect that counts.”3
In Johnston’s photograph of Catherine Moylan (1904–1969), she poses playfully with the view camera. Entirely nude, except for a pair of heels, Moylan’s mouth is open in a spirited smile and she peeks into the camera, hinting at the lively environment of Johnston’s studio. Johnston photographed her from the side, expertly positioning the curls of her hair to obscure her breast. A film star with hordes of male admirers, Moylan was crowned Miss Dallas in 1926 at age twenty-two in the First International Pageant of Pulchritude and Seventh Annual Bathing Girl Revue held in Galveston, Texas. Pageant contestants were judged on “beauty, form, grace, and personal charm,”4 and Moylan won first place in the event, becoming the first Beauty Queen of the Universe. She signed with MGM Studios and appeared in several silent films before starring in Our Blushing Brides and Love in the Rough, both in 1930.
After Ziegfeld’s death in 1932, Johnston ventured into advertising, continuing to photograph elegant society ladies and celebrities. He lived extravagantly during the Jazz Age, but in 1940, at the age of fifty-five, financial difficulties forced Johnston to abandon his lavish New York studio and retire to a fifteen-acre farm in Connecticut. From there, he continued to photograph as a hobby in a replica studio he constructed in his barn, using his old 11 x 14-inch camera. From time to time, he judged local photography competitions, and spoke on the radio about his career photographing the Follies girls. He tried teaching photography but had limited success, working mainly as a private tutor. In 1961, he attempted to donate all of his work to the Museum of Modern Art. Edward Steichen, photography department head, turned him down, suggesting he contact the Library of Congress. Johnston died in 1971 in an automobile accident. Although lost to most major accounts of photographic history, Johnston can be seen as one of the first true photographic art directors who launched young performers into stardom and began the cult of media personality.
Brittany Corrales
Alfred Cheney Johnston, Catherine Moylan, Ziegfeld Girl, 1920, gelatin silver print, 32.6 x 25 cm, SOLARI 91.013.003L