Talks of the Town: A New Book on Alice Austen with Bonnie Yochelson
June 6, 2024 | 6:30pm
A NEW BOOK ON ALICE AUSTEN WITH BONNIE YOCHELSON
Learn about new research and insights into the life and times of Staten Island’s famous Victorian era photographer.
Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen, is the forthcoming book on the life of Alice Austen (1866-1952). The book is co-authored by Bonnie Yochelson and Historic Richmond Town.
Austen was a prolific amateur photographer from a well-to-do family whose Victorian cottage, called Clear Comfort, overlooks New York harbor and is a National Historic Landmark and LGBTQ Historic Site. Today Austen is best known for a group of humorous photographs in which she and her friends challenged gender norms—dressing as prostitutes or in men’s clothing—and for “Street Types of New York,” a portfolio depicting people who worked on Manhattan’s streets. She took these photographs in the 1890s, and in 1899, she met Gertrude Tate, who became her life partner of more than 50 years. When in 1951 a young journalist asked her why she never married, the 84-year old Austen replied, "“I guess I was too good to get married.”
This book describes how a woman who grew up in the Gilded Age, when the term “lesbian” did not yet exist, challenged and conformed to the conservative ideals of Staten Island high society, and it deciphers the role photography played in her journey of self-discovery. Too Good to Get Married is the first in-depth study of Alice Austen since 1976. Historic Richmond Town is the steward of the Alice Austen Photograph Collection of 7,500 original prints and negatives.
Bonnie Yochelson is an art historian and independent curator. Formerly Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York, she has published books and organized exhibitions on Berenice Abbott, Alfred Stieglitz and Jacob Riis, among others. In 2025, her book, Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen, which is co-authored by Historic Richmond Town, will be published by Fordham University Press.
