[1] Since her mother had trouble finding dependable work, Sipprell's older brothers lived for a while with their grandparents about fifty miles away from their home.
At some point before she was ten years old, Sipprell and her mother moved to Buffalo, and, except for travels, she stayed in the United States the rest of her life.
While learning the technical aspects of the art, she experimented with a wide range of photographic media, including bromoil, gum, carbon and platinum prints.
Sipprell became involved in the activities of the Buffalo Camera Club, which, although its membership was closed to women at the time, allowed her to participate because her brother Frank was a member.
His interest, coupled with her own success, brought her invitations to speak at various photo clubs in New York City, and soon she was spending more time there than in Buffalo.
In 1915 Sipprell and long-time family friend and teacher Jessica Beers moved to New York, where they shared an apartment on Morningside Drive.
The big city better suited Sipprell's growing bohemian tastes, which quickly came to include smoking cigars, and pipes; drinking bourbon, driving fast convertibles, and wearing capes, exotic jewelry and embroidered Slavic clothing.
Over the next forty years she would photograph some of the most famous artists, writers, dancers and other cultural icons of the time, including Alfred Stieglitz, Pearl S. Buck, Charles E. Burchfield, Fyodor Chaliapin, Ralph Adams Cram, W. E. B.
Du Bois, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Granville Hicks, Malvina Hoffman, Langston Hughes, Robinson Jeffers, Isamu Noguchi, Maxfield Parrish and Eleanor Roosevelt.
In the late 1910s Sipprell met a young Russian woman named Irina Khrabroff, who became her lifelong friend, traveling companion and, later, her dealer and business manager.
In 1924 the threesome traveled to Europe, where Sipprell photographed the Adriatic Coast and, through connections with the Khrabroffs, members of the Moscow arts community.