In 1975, Alison walked into the Vineyard Gazette and got a job as an inserter. So every Friday morning, she would insert section B into section A, and the A-B combo into the front section. Super glamorous. She also submitted her black & white prints for consideration, and was published occasionally. Soon she was doing paste-up in the back shop. Within a few years, Alison became Design Director, supervising the layout and paste-up of the paper.
Henry Beetle Hough, Dick Reston, and Alison in the back shop. 1980 photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt
Throughout her 25 years at the Gazette, Alison shot photo assignments as a freelancer, earning $7 per published photo. The paper’s Goff Community offset press, oil-based inks, and heavy white paper stock reproduced the rich blacks and bright whites of Alison’s images beautifully. Her signature style developed quite a following, with Gazette readers looking forward to seeing her photos in the paper every week. By the early 80s, she began showing those photos at art galleries, and selling fine art prints of her work.
Alison’s first one-woman show at the Field Gallery in West Tisbury, 1981
By 1983 Nikon World magazine did a cover story on Alison’s black & white photography, calling her work “timeless…. An ‘Alison Shaw’ may be stark, dramatic or rarely peopled, but it is always stunning in its beauty.” Alison won New England Press Association’s Photographer of the Year award in 1981, 1987, 1991, and 1993. And she had shows of her b&w photography in a number of galleries, in places like Soho, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington DC.
In 1984, Alison and former Gazette publisher Henry Beetle Hough collaborated on a book with his essays and her black & white photos, titled Remembrance & Light. That same year, Charles Kuralt did a segment on Alison and Mr Hough on CBS Sunday Morning.
Brookside Farm 1983
In the late 80s, Alison began shooting in color, in addition to her continuing work in b&w. Thus began her focus on bright color…