Three Women in a Garden. Alice Austen’s Pictures and the Paradox of Documentary Photography

Abstract

That so very difficult question about “truth”, frequently posed in relation to both autobiographical artefacts and documentary photography, is no doubt the key query concerning Alice Austen’s whole oeuvre. Taking that question as a starting point for discussion, this article explores Austen’s autobiographical and documentary work as part of the same strategy, since Austen’s autobiographical photography “documents” the life of New Women and the class that she belonged to. But if her autobiographic production is documentary, why not consider her documentary work autobiographical? The article works on this hypothesis by engaging canonical autobiography texts and exploring how watching an event may mean becoming part of the event itself.