The Octopus, New York

Alvin Langdon Coburn received his first camera as a gift for his eighth birthday. He later studied photography with his cousin, F. Holland Day, 1898, and worked in the studio of Gertrude Kasebier, 1902-1903. In 1912 he emigrated to Britain and in 1932 became a naturalized citizen. Coburn abandoned photography between the years 1922-1955, but resumed photographic activity on a visit to Madeira, Spain ca.1956-1957. A founder of the Pictorial Photographers of America in 1916, he was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1931.