Background
(Elizabeth) Alice Austen was born in 1866 in Clifton, Staten Island, New York, United States.
(Elizabeth) Alice Austen was born in 1866 in Clifton, Staten Island, New York, United States.
A hobbyist who was maintained by a family trust, she took up photography at the age of twelve and continued to take pictures until 1930, when the economic "crash" and crippling arthritis prohibited her from further photographic adventures.
During twenty-two trips she made abroad, she took pictures of palaces and historical scenes in France, England and Germany. She was this country's earliest and foremost woman photographer to work outside a studio. She worked with a Scovill 4x5 camera. All her prints were contact prints. She revealed an instinct for photo-journalism eighty years before the word was coined, and is best known for her recording of national events and the genre views of her prosperous friends as well as the fishermen, blacksmiths and oyster shuckers of Staten Island.
