The home-turned-museum of Alice Austen, one of America’s earliest and most prolific female photographers, will receive thousands of her original images and negatives.
The Alice Austen House Museum (AAH) announced the repatriation of a near-complete archive of works by pioneering American photographer Alice Austen, famed for her intimate portraits of women’s lives in the Victorian era.
AAH, a historic house formerly known as Clear Comfort in Staten Island, was once the home and studio of Austen, and is now a museum and a member of the Historic House Trust.
When Austen was evicted from her home in 1945, she entrusted her collection of over 7,500 original prints and negatives to her longtime friend Loring McMillen at the Staten Island Historical Society, now known as Historic Richmond Town.
The collection, which represents the most comprehensive record of Austen’s life and work to date, is now being transferred from Historic Richmond Town to AAH. It includes more than 2,600 cellulose nitrate negatives, over 2,000 glass plate negatives, 1,500 photographic prints, and more than 300 additional items yet to be digitized.
As part of the initiative, a major collections project will launch in late 2025 to digitize and publish the entire archive online, expanding public access and inspiring new research into Austen’s life and legacy.
“The Alice Austen House is honored to partner with Historic Richmond Town in the deeply meaningful repatriation of Alice Austen’s glass plate negatives and printed photographs,” Victoria Munro, Executive Director of the Alice Austen House, says in a press release. “This transfer marks a pivotal moment — not only for our institution, but for the broader cultural landscape — at a time when LGBTQ+ communities face renewed threats of erasure.
“Museums must lead in preserving and amplifying these vital legacies, and we are proud to do so. As we celebrate our 40th year as a museum open to the public, welcoming Alice’s work back home is both historic and deeply moving.”
The Life and Legacy of Alice Austen
Austen was one of America’s earliest female photographers at a time when the art form was largely dominated by men. Born in 1866 into an affluent Staten Island family, Austen defied the restrictive conventions of the Victorian era by embracing a fiercely independent life and an uncompromising creative vision.
Introduced to photography at the age of ten by her uncle Oswald, Austen quickly developed a passion for the medium. Austen turned the second-floor closet of her home Clear Comfort into a darkroom after another uncle, a chemistry professor, showed her how to develop the glass plates she exposed.
Austen roamed around turn-of-the-century New York with a camera in hand and produced around 8,000 photographs in the course of her life. Many of her images captured immigrants, street vendors in the city as well as the inner lives and activities of Victorian women — offering a rare female perspective at the time.
Austen was independently wealthy for most of her life and has widely been considered an amateur photographer because she did not make her living from photography. However, she did copyright and publish some of her images — even being commissioned to take on paid photography assignments.
Austen lived for nearly 50 years with her partner Gertrude Tate, and is celebrated today as a trailblazer in LGBTQ+ history.
In 1945, Austen was forced to sell her home Clear Comfort after losing her savings in the Wall Street Crash and financially struggling throughout the Great Depression. She transferred her photographs to Staten Island Historical Society and moved into an apartment with Tate.
By 1949, the photographer’s arthritis became so severe that she became too difficult to care for. She was declared a pauper of the state and was moved to a poor house. In 1951, historian and former LIFE magazine writer Oliver Jensen discovered her photographs, which had been transferred to the Staten Island Historical Society. Jensen helped publish the photos in LIFE and other magazines, helping raise enough funds to transfer Austen to a private nursing home. His efforts not only brought her work to public attention but also led to the first exhibition of her photography.
In recent decades, Austen has been embraced as a key figure in early American photography and queer cultural history. Her former home, now the Alice Austen House Museum in Staten Island, is both a historic site and one of the few LGBTQ+ designated landmarks in New York City.
Image credits: Staten Island Historical Society
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