Alice Austen (March 17, 1866 – June 9, 1952) was a self-taught photographer born on Staten Island. She used her mother’s surname, Austen, because her father had left her mother before Alice was born.

Alice started her interest in photography when her uncle gave her a camera when she was 10 years old. After she began in her hobby, her camera equipment rarely left her side (though at times it weighed over 50lbs/~23kg altogether!)

Over her lifetime, Alice took thousands of photographs of all kinds of subjects. Her photographs are especially valuable as a window into daily life of the time.

Alice held onto her glass plate negatives, just thinking of her photography as a hobby. However, during the stock market crash of 1929, Alice and her family lost all their income, and … Read More »

Lakshmi Shankar (born 1926) is a Hindustani classical vocalist of the Patiala Gharana, and is one of the foremost and well-known vocalists of India. She is known for her performances of khyal, thumri, and bhajans. She’s also recorded Tamil folk songs, Hindu devotional songs of all sorts, film work (including the soundtrack to Gandhi) and for television documentaries.

Born in 1926, Lakshmi started her career in dancing. In 1939, when Uday Shankar brought his dance troupe to Madras, (recently renamed Chennai), she joined the Almora Centre to learn Uday Shankar’s dance style based on the Indian classics. She married the scriptwriter Rajendra Shankar, an elder brother of the famous sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, and became a part of Uday Shankar’s artistic circle during the early ’40s.

Ill health forced Lakshmi … Read More »