05/28/2026
Throwback Thursday to one of the great visual chroniclers of old Austin.
Photographer Martha Grenon was there to capture so many unforgettable moments in the extended Esther’s Follies universe and the larger creative world orbiting around it. She photographed Michael Shelton and Shannon Sedwick for the Austin Chronicle’s “Mixed Doubles” issue, documented the wonderfully chaotic Blandscrew Sisters at the legendary Urine Ball, and captured birthday celebrations for the Uranium Savages at The Ritz during the brief chapter when Esther’s called the historic theater home.
But Martha was more than a photographer. She was a true chronicler of the Austin music and arts scene during a time when the city’s creative spirit felt gloriously unpredictable. With camera in hand, she documented musicians, performers, comedians, artists, misfits, and nightlife legends in their natural habitat: backstage, onstage, in clubs, alleyways, dressing rooms, and late night Austin gatherings that now live on mostly through memory and photographs like hers.
Her images captured an Austin that was raw, eccentric, funny, intimate, rebellious, and deeply connected. The kind of Austin built on community as much as performance.
Martha worked for the Austin American-Statesman and later became a photographer and art director at the Austin Chronicle before finishing her professional career with the State of Texas ERS. But photography remained her first love throughout it all, and her body of work became part of the visual memory of Austin itself.
Long before everyone carried a camera in their pocket, Martha was documenting the people and places that shaped this city’s cultural identity. Today her photographs feel less like snapshots and more like living artifacts from an era that helped define Austin’s creative soul.
