One feminine photographer captured 7,000 photographs of Victorian girls that really feel extremely fashionable

When we consider Victorian girls, we don’t instantly image girls laughing collectively, hugging each other, smoking cigarettes, or dwelling their lives with out restraint. But thanks to at least one prolific feminine photographer of the time, we do have a glimpse into this maybe hidden, however however very actual world. 

Alice Austen: a photographer far forward of her time

Born in 1866 right into a rich Staten Island household, Elizabeth Alice Austen, identified in her maturity as Alice Austen, had a ardour for pictures for the reason that age of 10. Her affluence allowed her to pursue this curiosity. And pursue it she did, with meticulous rigor, whether or not she was taking meticulous notes, experimenting with publicity and light-weight, or creating pictures in a darkish room constructed for her by her uncle, who launched her to pictures within the first place. 

Austen would lug as much as fifty kilos of digital camera tools on her bicycle all through Manhattan, capturing numerous pictures of working-class communities. Tradespeople, laborers, and immigrants…a very completely different circle from what she grew up in, and one simply neglected by it.  

And but, one explicit subset would go on to be her actual legacy. 

Throughout her lifetime, Austen would seize hundreds of Victorian girls overtly dwelling their fact and having fun with their lives in ways in which society on the time would deem inappropriate. That included girls sharing intimate relationships, “marrying” each other, cross-dressing, and most scandalous of all…biking! 

Austen clearly didn’t create this assortment out of sheer novelty. She herself spent 55 years in a dedicated, loving relationship with a instructor named Gertrude Tate, 30 years of which have been spent dwelling collectively in Austen’s house, named “Clear Comfort.”  

A love story formed by circumstance

Tragically, destiny and conference would finally tear these two aside. The inventory market crash of 1929  worn out a lot of Austen’s wealth. She and Tate have been evicted from Clear Comfort, forcing them to return to their households who disapproved of the connection. Though they noticed one another weekly, issues would by no means return to what they as soon as have been. And regardless of their requests, they have been buried individually. 

This is among the many the reason why LGBTQ advocates have fought to have Austen’s queer id acknowledged, because it clearly performs a key half in her pictures work. Through her photographs, we see that even in a time when the world forbade it, individuals discovered methods to be themselves. 

Today, Clear Comfort is a “nationally designated site of queer history” and a museum showcasing her pictures. It additionally hosts queer karaoke nights, arm wrestling competitions, sapphic social meet-ups…all actions Austen would absolutely be mad as hops for. 

And on the official website for her work, Austen is rightfully described as somebody with “a natural instinct for photojournalism some 40 years before that word was coined” and an “artist, with a strong aesthetic sensibility and a determined eye.” 

More than a century later, Austen’s images nonetheless really feel alive as a result of the feelings conveyed by them stay immediately recognizable. Friendship, affection, humor, attraction, self-expression…these moments survived lengthy after the social guidelines meant to suppress them pale away. Her work presents a fuller image of Victorian life, one which feels much more human than what we grew up imagining.