Miss Elliot in Pose

Images 19 & 20: I’m continually impressed by the seeming sense of spontaneity found in so many of Alice Austen’s photographs. No matter what Austen fixed her lens upon she saw the potential for the camera to freeze action. She often drives that particular quality of her photographs to imbue them with narratives about people, herself and nature.

In these two images we have two different worlds where Austen felt quiet comfortable making images. Inside the women’s athletic club, Austen’s close friend Daisy strikes a classical pose, but it in the guise of the “new woman”, wearing billowing bloomers, while her friends gaze comfortably into her camera. One can feel a complicit air about this group in how they present themselves.

In the other image a small group of men are foraging from the site of a majestic shipwreck set upon rocks and roiling ocean. It’s also a document of changing times in Austen’s own backyard, but inside the world of men where Austen feels just as focused.

Text by: Paul Moakley, Editor at Large of Special Projects for TIME, Curator and Caretaker of the Alice Austen House and a documentarian raised in Staten Island.