Naomi Savage (1927 - 2005 )

Naomi Savage was born Naomi Siegler in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1927. Young Naomi was born into the arts. Her mother encouraged her to pursue music and she is the niece of the famous dada and surrealist painter, sculptor, and photographer, Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitsky). (1: Cahanbooks.com, 2: Pacpubserver.com)

During high school, Naomi attended a class taught by Bernice Abbott, who was Man Ray’s assistant in the 1920s, at the New School for Social Research. She attended Bennington College, where she studied the piano. She began to cultivate a growing interest in photography by photographing various composers. She eventually realized that this was what she really wanted to do, and put away the piano. Eager to learn, she traveled to California to study and apprentice with her uncle, Man Ray. Ray was a great inspiration to the young Naomi. He taught her that she should do whatever her imagination conjured up for her art. He allowed her to do anything she wanted (except spill the photo processing chemicals). (1: Cahanbooks.com, 2: Pacpubserver.com) Naomi Siegler’s name was changed when she married painter, sculptor, and architect, David Savage.(2: Pacpubserver.com)

Naomi Savage pioneered the use of photographic engravings, which she is best known for. She had her first exhibition in 1952 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and exhibited there again in 1960, 1966, and 1968. Her work can now be seen in the permanent collections of such museums as the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the International Center of Photography in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, and even the Noyes Museum in Oceanville, NJ. (1: Cahanbooks.com, 2: Pacpubserver.com) More recently Naomi Savage moved from classic dark room photography to using color copiers and computer imaging because of the speed of development and vast amount of flexibility one has on the computer.

Savage died in Princeton, New Jersey in 2005.

(JCA)

References:

Cahanbooks.com (see link below).

Pacpubserver.com (see link below).

In many ways, the experimental art of her uncle, Man Ray, can be felt in Naomi Savages work. She took the strange techniques he pioneered in the 20s and developed new and interesting ways to create and look at photographs.

Naomi Savage is most famous for inventing the photographic engraving. She came up with the idea after combining painting with photography. With a photographic engraving, the actual metal photographic plate itself is the art. It is described as “a kind of topographic photograph with forms in three dimensions and with a variety of metallic surfaces and tones.” (4: Lightresearch.net). The idea and process are very simple, but very interesting. Some of her most famous photographic engravings involve a series of portraits of her sister, which she manipulated in countless ways over many years. But her most famous photographic engraving (perhaps her most famous work of all) is a fifty-foot long mural she did on the side of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas. The Mural depicts the national elective offices held by L.B.J. and the various presidents under which he served. Savage chose each portrait photograph used for the engraving personally from the library’s more than 100,000 item collection. The mural is done in magnesium.

Today, Naomi Savage has moved more into the technological era. She has left the dark room behind for the many possibilities and ease of digital cameras, color copiers, and computer imaging. If she ever uses her Olympic point and shoot she takes her film to a department store’s one-hour photo processing lab rather than process the roll herself. Her latest works involve stringing together lettered beads on necklaces to create witty, amusing phrases like “money don’t grow on trees” and photographing them.

Even now, after so many years, Savage still has a fresh outlook on photography. She says, “Its endless what you can do…I’m having a lot of fun with this. I am never bored. I wake up in the morning and wonder which of ten things I will do. There’s just so much – you have to have five lives.”

(JCA)

(2: Pacpubserver.com)

(3: Austincityguide.com)

(4: Lightresearch.net)

Light Research: “Flexible Images: Handmade American Photography, 1962-2002” – http://www.lightresearch.net/articles/handmade.html