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Self-portrait
of 26-year-old Alice, posing on the porch in her favorite
yellow dress with red trim. (E.A.A., full length, with fan.
Fine day, in shade on piazza. Monday, Sept. 19th, Perken lense,
32 Stop, 3 secs.) Photo courtesy of the Staten Island Historical
Society.
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By the time she was eighteen years old (the earliest year from which
any of her photographic plates or prints survive), Alice Austen was
an experienced photographer with professional standards. The people
and places closest to her -- her grandparents, mother, aunt and uncles,
household servants and visitors, as well as the Austen house and garden
as seen from every possible angle of driveway and waters edge -- served
as the first subjects for Alice's camera. She also made many early
self-portraits, perhaps representing the natural vanity of an attractive,
smartly dressed young woman, or possibly some temporary reluctance
on the part of family members and friends to pose yet again, immobilized
in front of the camera for perhaps an hour or more. For young Miss
Austen was an exacting photographer. In her old age she could joke
about it, but she admitted that in her youth nothing but absolute
perfection -- in lighting, composition and even the facial expressions
of her long-suffering subjects would suffice before she would release
the shutter.
Alice Austen was active, social and well-traveled.
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("The
thousand and one"). Much more popular than South Beach up
the shore, Midland Beach attracted crowds from all areas of
the city. They came to enjoy the band concerts, ferris wheel
and amusements of the arcade on the boardwalk, as well as
the waves and sand. Photo courtesy of the Staten Island Historical
Society.
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Everywhere she went she took her photographic equipment with her.
Weighing as much as fifty pounds and sometimes filling a steamer trunk
it included cameras of different sizes, a tripod, magnesium flash
attachment, and glass plates as big as eight by ten inches. In a horse-drawn
buggy in the 1880's and 1890's, she carried her equipment around the
unpaved roads of Staten Island...to Midland Beach, South Beach, to
winter skating parties on the Island's frozen ponds and creeks and
private parties at the homes of friends. Popular and extraordinarily
athletic, Alice enjoyed many of the new sports of the time. The game
of lawn tennis was the sport she enjoyed the most and her camera was
as much a companion as her racquet. In 1885 the first tennis club
in the nation was established in Livingston. It was there that nineteen-year
old Alice spent countless summer afternoons,
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Two
contestants in the ladies' doubles tennis tournament concentrate
on victory at the Staten Island Ladies Club. (S.I.L.C. Tournament.
Miss Cahill & Miss McKinley. Fine sunny day. 3:30 pm,
Wednesday, Sept. 28th, 1892. Stanley, Waterbury lense, 50
ft. One plate went off too soon) Photo courtesy of the Staten
Island Historical Society.
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on the courts and behind her camera, photographing the players and
the crowds of spectators. Another sport fast becoming a national fad
was bicycling, and Alice shared the enthusiasm of her good friend
Violet Ward who wrote a book, Bicycling for Ladies, which was published
in 1896. There was much laughter involved when Violet shakily tried
to ride her bicycle slow enough for Alice's camera to capture her
in action. These illustrations for Violet's book are among the few
photographs Alice ever had commercially published.
During the 1890's Alice began to travel outside the environs of
Staten Island. Her trips took her upstate New York to Fishkill,
Fort Ticonderogaand Mohonk as well as interstate to Vermont, Illinois
and Massachusetts. In the autumn of 1892 we believe Alice and her
mother made a trip to Europe. She continued to
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Violet
Ward (left) and gymnast Daisy Elliott, who helped Violet with
her book on cycling for ladies, prepare to mount their vehicles
in the driveway of the Wards' house.Photo courtesy of the
Staten Island Historical Society.
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spend her summers traveling around Europe through the 1890's and into
the early part of the 20th century, always accompanied by her cumbersome
camera equipment.
Alice also carried her camera equipment about the streets of New
York, photographing the newly arriving immigrants and older residents
as they went about their business. Alice always photographed the
people and places of her world as they actually appeared, giving
us a beautiful visual window on 19th century America.
As she neared the age of fifty Alice Austen increasingly found
herself playing the role of a prominent member of Staten
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Violet
Ward concentrates on freewheeling her bicycle as slowly as
possible down the sloping lawn, but she is still moving a
shade too quickly for Alice's camera.Photo courtesy of the
Staten Island Historical Society.
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Island society. Beginning in l9l0, Miss E. Alice Austen was listed
annually in New York's Social Register. She frequented the Richmond
County Country Club on S.I. and was a member of the Colony Club in
Manhattan.
Next to photography, Alice's second love was gardening and she
worked almost every day from spring through autumn to improve the
garden her grandfather had laid out, turning the ground of
"Clear Comfort" into a horticultural showplace. In 1914 Alice founded
the Staten Island Garden Club, an organization that just celebrated
its 85th Anniversary and some of whose members are still involved
in maintaining the beautiful Victorian gardens at the Alice Austen
House Museum.
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