{"id":12037,"date":"2018-07-12T07:14:05","date_gmt":"2018-07-12T11:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/?p=12037"},"modified":"2018-07-08T15:05:15","modified_gmt":"2018-07-08T19:05:15","slug":"alice-austen-of-staten-island-photographer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/alice-austen-of-staten-island-photographer\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice Austen of Staten Island, photographer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Alice Austen c1892
at Clear Comfort, Staten Island<\/p><\/div>\n

Toronto<\/strong>. George Dunbar dropped me a note the other day about an early American woman photographer who\u00a0was discovered by a wider audience only near the end of her life. Like Vivian Maier<\/a>, she embraced photography as a hobby, but took her photographs more like a professional.<\/p>\n

Austen lived a life of luxury in her parent’s estate, a vast mansion and grounds on Staten Island called Clear Comfort.<\/em>\u00a0Never marrying, she spent a life of leisure and photography in the company of friends until the market crash of 1929 when she was wiped out. Shown here at 75 years old, Austen died a pauper<\/a>\u00a0a year later in 1952.<\/p>\n

A fine biography of her and her work was published in 1976. Called Alice’s World: The Life and Photography of an American Original, Alice Austen, 1866 – 1952<\/a>, it was written by author Ann \u00a0Novotny. Austen made only about 7,000 glass plate negatives over her life-time, but they offer an insightful record of a life of wealth in the NYC area, and Staten Island in particular.<\/p>\n

Just a year before her death, LIFE magazine did a seven page essay on Austen with many of her photographs in the September 24th, 1951 issue<\/a> beginning on page 137 of that issue (by the way, you can read the entire issue on the above link courtesy of Google. Use the little dropdown menu – top right on my browser – which says Front Cover<\/em> to link to the article on page 137 entitled “The Newly Discovered Picture World of Alice Austen<\/em>” ).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto. George Dunbar dropped me a note the other day about an early American woman photographer who\u00a0was discovered by a wider audience only near the end of her life. Like Vivian Maier, she embraced photography as a hobby, but took … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[2048,2051,58,2050,425,5,100,220,2049],"class_list":["post-12037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","tag-alice-austen","tag-early-1900s","tag-history","tag-late-1800s","tag-life","tag-photographer","tag-photography","tag-photos","tag-staten-island"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12037"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12045,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12037\/revisions\/12045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}