Sonya Noskowiak (25 November 1900 – 28 April 1975) was a 20th-century German-American photographer and member of the famous San Francisco photography collective Group f/64 that included Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. She is considered to be a central figure in one of the great art movements of the century. Throughout her career, Noskowiak photographed quite a few subjects those including landscapes, still lives and portraits. Her most well-known, and unacknowledged, portraits are of the author, John Steinbeck. In 1936, Noskowiak was awarded a prize at the annual exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artist. She was also represented in the San Francisco Museum of Art’s 1939 “Scenes from San Francisco” exhibit. Ten years before her death, Noskowiak’s work was included in a WPA exhibition at the Oakland Museum, in Oakland, California.
Table of Contents
- 1 Life
- 2 Photography
- 2.1 Sonya Noskowiak Archive (Guide Series; 5)
- 2.2 SONYA NOSKOWIAK ARCHIVE, GUIDE SERIES NUMBER FIVE
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Life
Early life
Noskowiak was born in Leipzig, Germany. Her dad was a landscape gardener who instilled in her an attentiveness of the home that would difficult become evident in her photography. In her in the future years, she moved approaching the world even if her dad sought decree in Chile, then Panama, before finally settling in Los Angeles, California in 1915. In 1919, she moved to San Francisco to enroll in secretarial school. Interested in photography at an further on age, in 1925, Noskowiak would become a receptionist in Johan Hagemeyer’s photographic studio in Los Angeles County. Upon expressing her interest in photography Hagemeyer, wrote off motivation as a meaninglessness in his diary.
Becoming a Photographer
In forward April 1929, Noskowiak met photographer Edward Weston at a party and the two began dating immediately; her eventually becoming his model, muse, pupil, and assistant. Weston first taught her to spot photos—touching stirring flaws in prints—before he giving her first professional camera. This camera included no film and for several months Noskowiak worked considering Weston pretending to photograph though he taught her the mechanics of photography. During her time with Weston Noskowiak’s photography developed tremendously showcasing her covenant of craftsmanship, as skillfully as her own style. Several of Weston’s works, such as Red Cabbage Halved and Artichoke Halved, were inspired by Noskowiak’s in advance negatives. Weston even in the same way as stated: “Any of these I would sign as my own.” Dora Hagemeyer (sister-in-law of Johan) wrote that though Noskowiak’s photographic style was tidy and take up like Weston’s, she “put into her feint something which is in seek of fact her own: a subtle and delicate loveliness.”
Group F.64
Photography in the late 1800s and to the fore 1900s was defined by pictorialism, a style that refers to a photographer manipulating an otherwise user-friendly photograph in the means of ‘creating’. This was in nod to claims that photography was not an art but merely scientific documentation. Weston and other photographers began to separate from pictorialism, with many having growing concerns very nearly their place in photography. In 1932 Noskowiak became an organizing fanatic of the short-lived Group f/64, which included such important photographers as Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke, Weston and his son Brett. Noskowiak’s works were shown at Group f/64’s inaugural exhibition at San Francisco’s M. H. de Young Museum; she had nine photographs in the exhibit – the thesame number as Weston. .
Early Success
In the summer of 1933, Noskowiak, along as soon as Weston and Van Dyke, traveled to New Mexico for scenery shots. Her photographs Cottonwood Tree – Taos, New Mexico, and Ovens, Taos Pueblo, New Mexico both are from this vacation and differ from her previous work. Cottonwood Tree is not nearly as intimate as her additional works while Ovens is the antediluvian of her put-on to focus on human-made culture. Later that summer, she had her first solo proceed at Denny-Watrous Gallery in Carmel. The exhibition included a series of photographs from New Mexico. She held choice solo exhibition at 683 Brockhurst in November. Between 1933 and 1940, she participated in a few of Group f.64 exhibitions, including shows such as the Fine Arts Gallery in San Diego, Fresno State College, and the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.
Group F.64 dissolvement
Noskowiak and Weston broke up in 1935, Group f. 64 disbanded hastily thereafter. Perhaps, due to her frayed relationship with Weston and perhaps because other members of the society were going their surgically remove ways. Although writings from Noskowiak began to dwindle during this grow old her career did not. Noskowiak in addition to moved to San Francisco and opened a portrait studio this same year. This same year Noskowiak moved to San Francisco to right of entry a portrait studio on Union Street. In 1936, she was one of eight photographers, including Weston, selected for the California region of the Federal Art Project to document California during the Great Depression
Commercial Work
Noskowiak also engaged in commercial proceed and commissions to make a living. After Groupf.64 dissolved, she spent the adjacent year photographing California artists and their paintings, sculptures, and murals. These images after that toured to a variety of public institutions. Though she continued to photograph as an artist, Noskowiak’s livelihood from the 1940s on was based on portraiture, fashion and architectural images. Noskowiak photographed many prominent figures such as painter Jean Charlot, dancer Martha Graham, composer Edgard Varèse, teenage violinist Isaac Stern, and writers Langston Hughes and John Steinbeck. The portrait of Steinbeck is particularly powerful, and is one of forlorn a handful of images of the writer in the 1930s. It is used extensively to this day. She continued classified ad photography stirring until the 1960s, photographing images for manufactures of lamps and stoves, as capably as for architects.
Photography
She primarily focused upon landscapes and portraits, specifically amid the 1930s and 1940s. Noskowiak embraced straight photography and used as a tool to allow newer meaning to her photographs. Her technique emphasizing the forms, patterns, and textures of her subjects, rather than just documenting it.
Her prehistoric works reflect the photographers of her period and their thoughts on pictorialism. In her antiquated works, such as City Rooftops, Mountains in Distance (the 1930s), there’s a graphicness to how she abstracted the piece. There’s the dark, strong industrial structure that contrasts adjacent to the buoyant sky. There are on the subject of no logs seen on the buildings, and if they are they are blurred higher than readability. This is an example of the ‘New Objectivity’ movement, which focused on a sharp, documentary contact to photography.
Noskowiak often composed her photographs to intersect her subjects, which gave a more functional feel to her photographs. Good examples of these are in her works Kelp (1930) and Calla Lily (1932). The composition crops the visual boundaries of the kelp plant and flower and draws the viewer’s eyes to the texture of the plants. Kelp is in view of that abstracted that if not for the title it would be unrecognizable. While in Calla Lily, her use of chiaroscuro gives a shimmering almost free feeling to the photograph.
Her photograph, Agave (1933), is an intimate viewing of the cactus plant. Another example of her compositions separating the plan from what is shown and emphasis on the beautiful pattern upon the plant.
Noskowiak utilized the thesame technique of straight photography in her pictorial portraits and public notice works. The same intimacy shown in Agave can be seen in portrait works such as John Steinbeck (1935) and Barbara (1941).
In both, she creates an intimate atmosphere, one in which the viewer feels as while they are there interacting subsequently the subjects.
Even in her more want ad works, Noskowiak’s style and technique yet remained. In her untitled 1930s photograph, you have a model taking into account a broad-brimmed hat that conceals her face. The composition of the piece relieves listeners from thinking virtually the photograph as an advertisement. The cropping and incline of the models pay for closeness, viewers gain the atmosphere of creature in the moment considering the model than an announcement quality.
Last update 2021-08-06