Alter-Sholem Kacyzne was born on 31 May 1885 to a poor working-class family in Vilna in the Russian Empire (now Vilnius, Lithuania), within the Pale of Settlement (the mandatory territory allowed as residence for Jews).

[citation needed] In the early 1920s he founded the literary series The Ark (Di Teyve, 1920, together with David Einhorn), the short-lived magazines Bells (Glokn, 1921) and The Links (Ringen, 1921–1922, in cooperation with Michal Veiherte ).

In 1924 he became co-founder of the magazine Literary Pages (Literarishe Bleter, 1924–1939; together with Israel Joshua Singer, Peretz Markish, Melech Ravitch and Nachman Mayzel [he]).

When Germany went on to attack the Soviets[citation needed] in 1941, Kacyzne tried to escape the Nazis and moved farther east to the also Soviet-occupied city of Tarnopol (today Ternopil, Ukraine).

The turning point in his professional career as a photographer began in 1921, when he was commissioned by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), a charitable organisation based in the United States of America, to make a series of images dedicated to the life of Jews in Polish cities and towns, including the eastern lands that were part of the territory of Poland – Galicia and Volhynia.

These images so impressed Abraham Cahan, Chief Editor of the New York newspaper Forward, that he suggested that Kacyzne document Jewish life in Poland for his publication.

These photographs, which are an important part of Kacyzne's work, are now kept in the YIVO Archive (Institute for Jewish Research) in Manhattan and in the Bibliothèque Medem of Paris.