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. 

Here he continued to do some photography, but mainly he visited and lectured at area photography clubs. During World War II, Johnson served as chairman of Oxford's Civil Defense Board. At the war's end, his involvement in the community diminished.

His final years were spent in relative obscurity. Times had changed. Standards of beauty and propriety were different. Johnston's art was largely forgotten. On April 17, 1971, he died at the age of 87 as the result of a car crash.