Ziegfield Follies Designer

Famed Ziegfeld Follies Photographer Called Oxford Home (With Video)

Alfred Cheney Johnston achieved fame as a photographer of beautiful women. That was not exactly how his career started.

The son of a prominent New York banker, he studied art and illustration at the National Academy of Design in New York City. As a portrait artist, he was a failure and he supported himself retouching photos. He was able to join Napoleon Sarony's studio in New York, which was noted for theatrical portraits. There he became a camera assistant and developed his talents.

Eventually, Ziegfeld Follies founder, Florenz Ziegfeld, saw his photography.  Impressed, Ziegfeld hired Johnston as official photographer of the Ziegfeld Follies, a series of elaborate theatrical performances on Broadway, according to Wikepedia . With Johnston's eye for beauty and the beautiful Ziegfeld girls, his work was soon appreciated. He became one of the top photographers in New York. By 1917, his name was published under the portraits in the "Follies" promotionals. They appeared in such magazines as Vanity Fair. (View a YouTube video of Johnston's photographs attached to this story.)

Johnston's risqué photographs often went beyond the time's accepted standard of suggestive nudity. Photographs showing thinly veiled breasts might be hung in a theater lobby, but those with total nudity were unacceptable. After his death, many nude photos marked "private" were found in his studio. 

After the publication of his book, Enchanting Beauty, featuring some of his nude photos, Johnston became popular as an advertising photographer. His portraits were so esteemed that movie stars, theater stars and wealthy society women came to be photographed. For a while, he worked in California photographing publicity shots for "A Perfect Crime" and "The Forbidden Thing."

Johnston preferred working on the east coast where he received greater recognition.  He began experimenting with color processing. When the Ziegfeld Follies closed at Ziegfeld's death in 1932, Johnston was an established photographer. He was already incorporated and selling his nude photos to the public. He also did the lighting design for several Broadway productions. In 1934, the Smithsonian Institution exhibited a selection of his portraits.  That was followed in 1937 by publication of his nude photos, ENCHANTING BEAUTY, priced at 75 cents.

By 1940, Johnston gave up his lavish New York Studio and retired to his 15-acre farm in Oxford. He took up residence in the 1769 Beecher-Chatfield house at 136 Chestnut Tree Hill Road Extension. He set up a studio in the barn, where he also set up an artist’s studio for his wife.

Arts Black | Exercise

Famous black and white photography prints go for exorbetent amounts of money in the art market. Have you  regretted not knowing about an artist’s work when it was cheap enough for you to invest in before it  started going up and up like a red hot stock tip? Well here’s your chance. The black and white photographs  of Alfred Cheney Johnston, a contemporary of Alfred Stieglitzand Edward Steichen are just beginning to gather momentum.

Alfred Cheney Johnston was the famed photographer of the Ziegfeld Follies. During the years he worked for  Flo Ziegfeld, Cheney photographed the hot celebrities of the day such as -  Ann Pennington – famous for her  shake and quiver dance, Eddie Cantor, and of course Flo Ziegfeld’s wife, Billie Burke, best known for her  role has the good witch in the “Wizard of Oz”. Not to mention all the beautiful stars of the Ziegfeld Follies.

ACJ shot thousands of stunning fine art black and white photographs. They’re stunning because of his fine art  training. ACJ started out as an art student in New York City and was a protege of artist Charles Dana  Gibson who created the “Gibson Girl” modeled after his wife. While Cheney was still in art school the  medium of photography was gaining ground as an acceptable art medium. It was Gibson who spiked Alfred  Cheney Johnston’s interest in photography in the first place and encouraged him to experiment with  it as a  new way to express his artistry. Thankfully Cheney listened.

In his hay-day of the Roaring 20’s Alfred Cheney Johnston was in enormous demand. Not only was he recording  the images of all the major  stars and many of the chorus girls of the Ziegfeld Follies, he was  photographing the high society of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Soon the California film industry came  calling wanting to hire ACJ to shoot stills of their celibritys . At one time Johnston was as famous as many  of the people he photographed.

The Stock Market Crash of 1929 raked havov all across the United States. With money tight, especially for  such luxuries as going to Broadway musicals, Flo Ziegfeld was forced to close the Follies. Out of a lucrative job, Alfred Cheney  Johnston and his wife retreated to an old Connecticut farm where he lived out his life in obscurity.

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