A Free Author Lecture with Bonnie Yochelson

Date: Sunday, October 4, 2026
Time: 4pm
Location: Hoboken Historical Museum, 1301 Hudson Street
Admission: Free

Join the Hoboken Historical Museum for a free lecture with art historian and curator Bonnie Yochelson, author of Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen. Presented in connection with the Museum’s current Main Gallery exhibition, What They Saw: Hoboken’s Amateur Photography Clubs 1889–1934, this program explores the life and work of Alice Austen, one of the most distinctive photographers of her generation and a pioneering LGBTQ+ icon.

The Museum’s exhibition introduces visitors to Hoboken’s early “camera fiends,” amateur photographers who carried heavy tripods and glass negatives through the city to document its waterfront, streets, taverns, architecture, disasters, and everyday life. Drawn from the collections of the Hoboken Historical Museum and Hoboken Public Library, their photographs preserve a city undergoing tremendous change.

Working during this same transformative era, Alice Austen used photography to record both the social world around her and the rapidly changing streets of New York. Her images ranged from carefully composed scenes of friends and family to photographs of working people and public life. She was also an accomplished amateur photographer at a time when cameras were becoming more accessible, photography clubs were gaining popularity, and women were beginning to claim greater independence behind the lens.

During the lecture, Yochelson will discuss Austen’s unconventional life, her development as a photographer, and the ways her images challenged expectations surrounding gender, class, work, and women’s lives at the turn of the twentieth century. She will also share insights from her research for Too Good to Get Married, the first major biography of Austen published in nearly fifty years.

Visitors will also discover Alice Austen’s connection to Hoboken. In 1897, she traveled from Staten Island with her camera equipment to photograph the devastating factory fire that swept through the city, capturing the same remarkable event as Hoboken photographer William Petersen. This fascinating local connection underscores the shared photographic history explored throughout What They Saw: Hoboken’s Amateur Photography Clubs, 1889–1934, while placing Hoboken’s amateur photographers within the broader story of photography in the New York metropolitan region. A question-and-answer session will follow the presentation.

About the Speaker

Bonnie Yochelson is an art historian and curator specializing in photography and the photographic history of New York City. Formerly Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York, she has organized exhibitions and published books on photographers including Jacob Riis, Alfred Stieglitz, and Berenice Abbott. She taught in the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Arts for thirty years.

Admission is free. Register here!