Naomi Savage Photography

Untitled (Portrait of Roberta Kimmel Cohn) Silver gelatin print on photographic paper c. 1981 Signed with the photographer's hand stamp verso From a presentation portfolio given the ...

Roberta Kimmel Cohn (1937-2015) Toned sliver gelatin print, c. 1981 Unsigned (Signed and dedicated on the sketchbook page) see photo Condition: Excellent Image size: 13 1/4 x 10 5/8 ...

This depicts a chair in the manner of Mexican surrealist modernist Pedro Friedeberg with a dried flowers. It is a hand signed, titled and dated vintage silver gelatin print photograph. and bears the artists studio stamp verso. Naomi Siegler Savage (1927 – 2005) was an American woman photographer. A native of Princeton, New Jersey, Naomi Savage was the niece of artist Man Ray. She first studied photography under Berenice Abbott at the New School for Social Research in 1943, following this with studies in art, photography, and music at Bennington College from 1944 until 1947. The next year she spent in California with her uncle, studying his techniques. When she returned to New York in 1948, she combined her love of music with her skill in photography by taking portraits of the best known composers of day: Aaron Copland, John Cage, Virgil Thomson, etc. (over 30 in all). In 1950 she married the architect and sculptor David Savage, with whom she moved to Paris, living there for some years. During her career Savage received an award from the Cassandra Foundation in 1970, and a photography fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1971. In 1976 she received the silver award from the Art Directors Club. Later in life, Savage returned to live in Princeton, where she died. Savage was heavily influenced by her uncle, the avant garde artist Man Ray, prompting her to experiment with the medium of photography, combining traditional techniques with more unusual processes, including some of her own design. She worked extensively with photogravure and photoengraving, transforming these mechanical printing techniques to be used for aesthetic effects rather than duplication. Unlike many photographers, Savage considered the metal plate that photographs are etched on to be a work of art in its own right. She pioneered the use of using the photographic metal plate to produce a three dimensional form with a metallic surface. Savage explored variations in color and texture in her work often by using inked and intaglio relief prints. Many of her works were created by combining media such as collage, negative images, texture screening, multiple exposure, photograms, solarization, toning, laser printing on metallic foils. Her works focus on a variety of subject matter and imagery, which has included portraits, landscapes, human figures, mannequins, masks, toys, kitchen utensils, dental and ophthalmological equipment. Her approach represents an involvement with "process as medium," and an interest in art as image manipulation, a pursuit shared by contemporaries like Robert Heinecken, Betty Hahn, and Bea Nettles. She has experimented extensively with photogravure and photoengraving, employing these mechanical printing techniques for aesthetic effects rather than duplication. Savage uses inked and intaglio relief prints to explore variations in color and texture, and considers the metal plate on which the photograph has been etched to be a work of art in its own right. She has also combined media--collage, negative images, texture screening, multiple exposure, photograms, solarization, toning, printing on metallic foils--and made laser color prints. Several of her pieces are owned by the Museum of Modern Art, and she is represented as well in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the International Center for Photography, the Fogg Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Madison Art Center. A photo engraved mural depicting the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson is a centerpiece of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. A collection of her papers relating to the life of Man Ray is held by the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. She was included in the show Making Space at MoMA in 2017. It shone a spotlight on the stunning achievements of women artists between the end of World War II (1945) and by Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, and Joan Mitchell; the radical geometries by Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, and Gego; and the reductive abstractions of Agnes Martin, Anne Truitt, and Jo Baer; the fiber weavings of Magdalena Abakanowicz, Sheila Hicks, and Lenore Tawney; and the process-oriented sculptures of Lee Bontecou, Louise Bourgeois, and Eva Hesse. The exhibition also featured treasures such as collages by Anne Ryan, photographs by Gertrudes Altschul, Naomi Savage, Ruth Asawa, Carol Rama, and Alma Woodsey Thomas...