Self-Image in Cochiti Lake
Artist
Anne Noggle
(American, 1922 - 2005)
Date1978
Mediumgelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 15 1/4 × 22 1/4 in. (38.7 × 56.5 cm)
Support: 20 × 23 7/8 in. (50.8 × 60.6 cm)
Mat: 22 × 28 in. (55.9 × 71.1 cm)
Support: 20 × 23 7/8 in. (50.8 × 60.6 cm)
Mat: 22 × 28 in. (55.9 × 71.1 cm)
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineGift of the Anne Noggle Foundation, 2016
Object number2016.2.5
DescriptionWoman’s face at center of composition with partial view of chest and two outspread arms. Her arms and most of her chest are submerged in water. She is looking at the viewer and is wearing earrings. Around her neck is a string of pearls in a triple strand.eMuseum Notes
In
this striking self-portrait, the artist poses as a bathing beauty in a
constructed lake between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Recovered from her face-life
in 1975, she adorns herself with earrings and pearls and apparently little
else. Encompassed by the darkness of the water around her, Noggle gives us no clues as to whether she is
floating or drowning.
In a conversation with Katherine
Ware in 2016, Noggle’s friend and studio assistant Jim Holbrook said he was
with the artist when she made this photograph and that he was the one to click
the shutter on her camera. He said they would sometimes go sailing at the lake.
Cochiti Lake, where this photograph was taken, is a recreational lake created by an earth fill dam on the Rio Grande, built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers on the Pueblo de Cochiti Indian Reservation in Sandoval Country, New Mexico. It was completed in 1973.
On View
Not on view