Anne Noggle, a photographer and former World War II pilot known for her keen self-portraits and images of older women that bared the imperfections and character of age, has died. She was 83.
Noggle, who had a major stroke two years ago, died in her sleep Aug. 16 at her home in Albuquerque, N.M.
Noggle focused on the effects of aging. She described her subject as “the saga of the fallen flesh.”
She generally photographed people she knew, approaching them with humor, honesty and respect.
One memorable photo, for example, shows her mother in the bathroom holding her false teeth. In another photo, Noggle amplified a woman’s wrinkles by shooting through rippled glass.
Noggle became her best-known subject in a portrait of herself after plastic surgery. “Face-lift No. 3, 1975” showed Noggle when she was 53, with eyes blackened and ringed with stitches. Mocking her own vanity, she holds a flower in her mouth.
In the background is a model airplane, a reminder of her youth, when she was one of the 1,000 women who flew noncombat missions during World War II for the Women Air Force Service Pilots, or WASP.
She flew missions in 1943 and 1944. After the war ended and the corps was disbanded, she became a crop-duster in the Southwest and flew stunts in an aerial circus.
When the Air Force offered commissions to former WASPs, she applied and was a pilot during the Korean War. She retired as a captain when she developed emphysema.
She was 48 when she had her first one-woman show at a gallery in Taos, N.M., in 1970.
Over the next two decades, she won a number of major grants, including three from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She taught at the University of New Mexico from 1970 to 1984.
From Herald news services
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