Anne Noggle was an American aviator and photographer. She served as a military pilot during World War II and began a photography career in her forties.
At 21, Noggle traveled to Sweetwater, Texas, to train to become one of the Women Airforce Service Pilots. She graduated in the class of 44-W-1. She flew missions in 1943 and 1944. The WASP were disbanded in late 1944. After the war, she became a crop-duster in the Southwest and flew stunts in an aerial circus. When the Air Force offered commissions to former WASPs after the war, she applied and was a pilot during the Korean War. She retired as a captain in 1959 when she developed emphysema. She later described her aviation career this way: "I flew airplanes for a living for eleven years and 6,000 hours... When I was twenty-five I became a stunt pilot with an air show; when I was twenty-six I became a crop-duster pilot." While in the Air Force, Noggle had been stationed in Paris. She visited the Louvre, which ignited an artistic impulse.
Education
Noggle went back to school, at the University of New Mexico; she earned a bachelor's degree in fine art in 1966 and in 1969 graduated with a master's degree in art. She developed her skills as a photographer and developed an interest in documenting the aging process of women – including her own "witty and challenging" self-portraits. The University of New Mexico gave her an honorary doctorate, acknowledging her "extensive contribution to the field of art and art history."
Photography career
Influenced by female photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron and Diane Arbus, Noggle's work mainly focused on the aging process of women, a subject which she referred to as "the saga of the fallen flesh". Using humor and pathos to depict the women she photographed, Noggle photographed her subjects in a way that displayed both femininity and sexual energy. Perhaps her most famous series of photographs was taken in 1975, when she photographed herself after receiving a facelift. Her ability to find beauty using bizarre subject matter typified her career as a photographer. Noggle was 48 when she had her first one-woman show, at a gallery in Taos, New Mexico, in 1970. Noggle was Curator of Photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art from 1970 to 1976. Noggle taught as an adjunct professor of Art at the University of New Mexico from 1970 to 1984. In 1982, Noggle was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial fellowship.
In 1975 Noggle co-curated an exhibition and catalog for the San Francisco Museum of Art, Women of Photography: An Historical Survey. This exhibition was credited with introducing the work of American women photographers to a broader audience. Her 1983 book Silver Lining showcased Noggle's photographs documenting the challenges she and other women in America faced as they grew older. She made portraits of her fellow WASPs as older women in the book For God, Country and the Thrill of It: Women Airforce Service Pilots in World War II. A Dance with Death, telling the story of the Soviet airwomen of World War II, was published in 1994. Noggle had traveled to the Soviet Union to photograph and record the stories of these women.
Quotes
Why she photographed older women:
"I like older faces, not because of aging itself, but rather the look of the face, the revelation of life, and the conflict between what was and what they are now. That interests me, not the idea of aging itself."
"I find young faces a tabula rasa, nothing is written there. They are empty until they reach their 40s. Then they become photographable."
