April 25, 2008


Anne Noggle

Women in Photography is a showcase of work curated by Amy Elkins and Cara Phillips. In Cara’s post on the project she pointed out the work of Anne Noggle, a photographer who began taking pictures at 47 and documented the human face and body in all its aging glory.

Noggle remembers the experience her sister had after having her cataracts removed. She could see everything so clearly, including her own face in the mirror, and contemplated buying a hammer so that she could break all of the mirrors in her house.

posted by Deron Bauman in gender, history, photography 

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3 Responses to “Anne Noggle”

  1. Sheila Ryan on April 25th, 2008 at 11:55 am

    The California Museum of Photography labels [Anne Noggles's] work “Critical Self-Portraiture.”

    I wonder to what extent critical self-portraiture comes with the (female) territory.

    The set of snapshots I labeled (after the fact) Scenes from an Imaginary Vampire Film sprang from an impulse to confront some things possessed of potential to frighten me. Viewing my own face illuminated by harsh light is one of the these, and I thought to confront it by snapping a number of quick camera-phone images. Later it struck me that many attributes of our modern-day vampire myth — the dream of eternal (youthful) life, the power of harsh daylight (and mirrors) to shatter this dream — could rest as a palimpsest over images of my own loss of youth.

    And if that doesn’t work for you, you can always imagine a vampire movie set in northwestern Illinois within the confines of a Honda Element and enclosures surrounding a roadside pit toilet and a pair of garbage dumpsters.

  2. Deron Bauman on April 25th, 2008 at 12:02 pm

    Later it struck me that many attributes of our modern-day vampire myth — the dream of eternal (youthful) life, the power of harsh daylight (and mirrors) to shatter this dream — could rest as a palimpsest over images of my own loss of youth.

    That’s astute.

  3. Sheila Ryan on April 25th, 2008 at 12:23 pm

    Thank you, Deron. But alas, my observation probably doesn’t have the money-making potential of the vampire film with scenes in roadside pit toilets and garbage dumpsters.

    If I could meld my “astute” (DB) insight with my feel for garbage, trash, effluvia, and ephemera, I might could make me something one of these days.

    I must still be under the influence of having watched John Waters’s This Filthy World last night.

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