Alice Austen House celebrates photographer's queer identity as "essential to understanding her work"
NEW YORK - As we celebrate Pride Month, we recognize the voices of those who suffered the injustice of being silenced simply for being their authentic selves.
Alice Austen is one. She made an indelible mark with her photography, and other notable pursuits.
As CBS2's Mary Calvi tells us, she was never properly recognized through the lens of who she really was until years after death.
A photo shows Austen with her partner of more than 50 years, Gertrude Tate. But to fully understand who Austen was, we first have to know about where she lived, spending most of her 86 years in her home "Clear Comfort" on Staten Island.
"We're in one of New York's historic houses. The initial the bones of the house were built in 1690," said Victoria Munro, executive director of the Alice Austen House. "We're a photographic museum, because we represent the life and work of our namesake, Alice Austen."
"Recognizing her queer identity was essential to understanding her work. And understanding her life, we can dig deeper into all of the themes that Alice explored within her photography," Munro added.
Munro says the home was a muse for Austen, a backdrop for some of her notable images. But beyond that, Austen, born in 1866, is recognized as one of the first woman photographers to document life outside of a studio.
"Whether that be taking her camera to the streets of Manhattan and photographing immigrants at work, documenting the conditions and the people on the quarantine stations," Munro said.
But it's the most personal aspects of her life and work that helped reshape the understanding of who she was and how she lived.
"Now when we're talking about Alice's queer photographs... these very personal photographs would have been meant for circulation privately, most likely with her with her circle of friends, right? So we see cross dressing, very, very risqué short skirts," Munro said. "And they're just absolutely wonderful and give us a window into her world."
Austen, an only child of a wealthy family, was encouraged to explore her varied interests.
"It's not just the photography that she's so confident, and bold, and exploring. Alice starts all of these clubs," Munro said. "She's creating safe spaces for women and queer woman. So she starts the Staten Island Garden Club. She is the founding member... of the Staten Island Bicycle Club. And remember, bicycles were key in part of woman's emancipation, their clothing, their ability to go out without being chaperoned by a man. She was a champion tennis player here on Staten Island."
Yet for all Austen accomplished, it wasn't until 1970, nearly 20 years after her death, that her relationship with Tate was celebrated for what it was, and her home added to the LGBT Historic Sites, the first in New York City devoted to a woman to receive that designation.
"We've made great pains here at the Austin house to really bring ourselves to the forefront of LGBTQ interpretation at historic sites. We sent her Alice's narrative as living her life with Gertrude Tate, in our story on our walls, through her photographs, and through our education and public programs," Munro said.
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