Sonya Noskowiak

Art photography in the late 1800s and early 1900s was defined by pictorialism, a style that refers to a photographer's manipulation of an otherwise straightforward photograph as the means of 'creating' the final work.

This was in response to claims that photography was not an art but merely scientific or mechanical documentation.

Weston and other photographers began to turn away from pictorialism, with many having growing concerns about their place in photography.

Sonya Noskowiak (25 November 1900 – 28 April 1975) was a 20th-century German-American photographer and member of the San Francisco photography collective Group f/64 that included Ansel Adams and Edward Weston.

She is considered an important figure in one of the great photographic movements of the twentieth century.

Throughout her career, Noskowiak photographed landscapes, still lifes, and portraits.

Her most well-known, though unacknowledged, portraits are of the author John Steinbeck.

In her early years, she moved around the world while her father sought work 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 from an early age, in 1925, at age 25, Noskowiak became a receptionist in Johan Hagemeyer's photographic studio in Los Angeles County.

Upon expressing her interest in photography to him, Hagemeyer wrote off her dream as a joke in his diary.

In early April 1929, Noskowiak met photographer Edward Weston at a party, and the two began a relationship immediately; she eventually became his model, muse, pupil, and assistant.

Weston first taught her to "spot' photos——touching up flaws in prints——before giving her her first professional camera. This camera contained no film, and for several months Noskowiak worked with Weston, pretending to photograph while he taught her the mechanics of photography. During her time with Weston, Noskowiak's photography developed greatly, suggesting her understanding of craftsmanship as well as expressing her own style. Several of Weston's works, such as Red Cabbage Halved and Artichoke Halved, were inspired by Noskowiak's early negatives. Weston once said: "Any of these I would sign as my own." Dora Hagemeyer (sister-in-law of Johan Hagemeyer) wrote that while Noskowiak's photographic style was clean and direct like Weston's, she "put into her work something which is essentially her own: a subtle and delicate loveliness."

The portrait of Steinbeck is particularly powerful and is one of only a handful of images of the writer in the 1930s.

It is still used extensively to represent him.

Noskowiak primarily focused on landscapes and portraits between the 1930s and 1940s.

In 1932 Noskowiak became an organizing member of the short-lived Group f/64, which included such important photographers as Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Willard Van Dyke, as well as 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; nine photographs of hers were included in the exhibit – the same number as Weston.[5].

In the summer of 1933, Noskowiak, along with Weston and Van Dyke, traveled to New Mexico to photograph the scenery.

Her photographs Cottonwood Tree - Taos, New Mexico, and Ovens, Taos Pueblo, New Mexico were taken on this trip and differ from her previous work.

Cottonwood Tree is not nearly as intimate as her other works, while Ovens is the earliest of her work to focus on human-made culture.

Later that summer, she had her first solo show at Denny-Watrous Gallery in Carmel.

The exhibition included a series of photographs from New Mexico.

She had another 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 those at the Fine Arts Gallery in San Diego, Fresno State College, and the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.

Noskowiak and Weston broke up in 1935, and Group f/64 disbanded shortly thereafter—perhaps because of her frayed relationship with Weston and perhaps because other members of the group were going their separate ways.

Although Noskowiak's writing began to diminish during this time, her photographic career did not.

Noskowiak moved to San Francisco and opened a portrait studio that year on Union Street.

In 1936, Noskowiak was awarded a prize at the annual exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists.

In 1936, she was one of eight photographers, including Weston, selected from the California region of the Federal Art Project to document California during the Great Depression.

Noskowiak also engaged in commercial work and commissions to make a living.

After Group f/64 dissolved, she spent the next year photographing California artists and their paintings, sculptures, and murals.

These images then toured to a variety of public institutions.

She was also represented in the San Francisco Museum of Art’s “Scenes from San Francisco” exhibit in 1939.

Ten years before her death, Noskowiak's work was included in a WPA exhibition at the Oakland Museum in Oakland, California.

Noskowiak was born in Leipzig, Germany.

Her father was a landscape gardener who instilled in her an awareness of the land that would later become evident in her photography.

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.

She continued commercial photography up until the 1960s, photographing images for manufactures of lamps and stoves, as well as for architects.