About Alice Austen. Alice Austen was introduced to photography when she was 10 years old by her Uncle Oswald, who brought home an early-model dry plate camera from one of his many trips abroad. Alice showed Alice was active, social, and well traveled. Everywhere she went, she took her camera equipment, which sometimes weighed as much as fifty pounds and often filled a steamer trunk. As a result of her desire to photograph so much of her life and the world around her, her range of subjects was extensive. In her lifetime, she created images on approximately 8,000 glass plates, of which more than 3,000 survive. Alice remained an amateur photographer at heart, though she sold some of her work. She took pictures for the love of it-and so she had more freedom to express herself than professional Victorian women photographers. Her straightforward style anticipated documentary photography. At the same time, she used composition, pose, costuming, and satire to convey her point of view. About the house. Clear Comfort (a.k.a. The Alice Austen House) was built in 1690. In 1844 it was purchased by John
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immediate and natural ability. Through experimentation she taught herself how to operate the complex camera mechanism, judge exposure, develop the heavy glass plates, and make prints. By the time she was 18 in 1884, she was not only technically skilled but artistically accomplished as well.
Haggerty Austen, Alice Austen's grandfather. Alice Austen herself moved there as a young girl in the late1860's with her mother, Alice Cornell Austen, after the two were abandoned by Alice's father. She went on to spend most of her life there, until financial problems and illness forced her to move in 1945. In her absence, the house fell into disrepair until a group of concerned citizens saved it from demolition in the 1960's. The house successfully gained status as a historic landmark, and was restored in the mid 1980's. It currently serves as a museum of Alice Austen's life and times.