With his panoramic view of the port of New York, the house that trailing photographer Alice Austen (1866-1952) Home mentioned for most of her life, is a vast, two-storey, elegant Victorian Gothic Gothic on the water known as clear comfort. Located on the coastline of Staten Island near the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, she would have witnessed the monumental statue of the Statue of Liberty in 1886, immigrants who arrived in Ellis Island and soldiers from the First World War who returned from the front – of the time she took in more than 7,000 incredible photos during her life.
The oeuvre of Austen is considered one of the earliest and the most productive by a female photographer. For a long time as an amateur because she mainly pursued the vessel as a hobby, she is now recognized for her important contributions to the canon of American photography. For a few decades, her work was coated by the historic city of Richmond, formerly the States Island Historical Society, where more than 7,500 prints and negatives were entrusted in 1945. This month the entire archive will return to remove comfort – now known as the Alice Austen House– Thank you for a historical acquisition.
Austen grew up in New York and discovered photography when she was 10 years old and put her bedroom cupboard in a dark room. “In this home studio, who was also one of her photographic muses, she produced thousands of photos of a rapidly changing city of New York, which makes important contributions to photographic history, documenting New York immigrant populations, the social activities of Victorian women and the natural and architectural world of her journeys,” says the museum.
While she participated in Victorian society as a woman of wealth and privileges, Austen also shot over and mocked her habits and defended the expectations of gender roles and homeliness. “Austen was a rebel that broke off the limitations of its Victorian environment and forged an independent life that broke boundaries of acceptable female behavior and social rules,” the museum says. She often dragged the cumbersome camera equipment, with a weight of up to 50 pounds, on her bike.
Austen took humorous photos of family and friends during relaxed activities in New York and on international journeys. She also focused on immigrants and working class people in New York City, but her images mainly emphasize the style of the higher class and activities, from tea time “larks” to swimming to the girls – her relationships with other women who influence the kind of work she has made and how we read it today.
Marking of an important site in the history of LGBTQ+, clearly comfort was 30 years at home for both Austen and her life partner Gertrude Tate. Austen met the kindergarten and dance teacher in 1899 and started a relationship that would span over for more than five decades. While financial difficulties forced them at the end of their lives – Austen lost all her wealth at the stock market crash of 1929 and she and Tate were deported from clear comfort from 1945 – argued for the preservation of the work of Austen. Their families denied the last wishes of the couple to be buried together.
Nowadays, Alice Austen House is dedicated to present the width of the work of the pioneering photographer and to emphasize it so far, still influential role in the history of LGBTQ+. The organization is a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservations Historical artists houses and studios Program (earlier) and is open to the public from Tuesday to Saturday.
If you are in Chicago, the work of Austen is included in The first homosexuals: The birth of a new identity, 1869-1939 bee Wrightwood 659 up to and including July 26. The return of the archive to the ancestral house of Austen also corresponds to the release of Too good to get married: The life and photos of Miss Alice Austen By Bonnie Yochelson. Find your copy Bookstoreand plan your visit to the Alice Austen -Uuis on the museum website.
