NAOMI SAVAGE

Naomi Savage, 78, photographer, died at her home in Princeton, New Jersey, on November 22, 2005.  While still in high school, she took a class in photography at the New School for Social Research with Berenice Abbott.  Some twenty years earlier, Abbott had studied photography in Paris with Man Ray, who was Naomi Savage’s uncle.  In 1946, Savage enrolled in Bennington College, where she studied art and music, but before graduating, left to be an apprentice for Man Ray in Hollywood.  He taught her that photography was above all a creative process, one of many tools that could be used for the purpose of visual expression.  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).  Throughout her career, she experimented with the medium of photography, continuously inventing new and highly original techniques.  Perhaps her best known work is a series of metal photo engravings (1972) dominating the walls of the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas.  In her later years, she became attracted to the enormous potential of digital imagery, experimenting with various methods to manipulate and enhance color, even using new and unconventional materials for laser printing.  She exhibited widely, most recently at the Montclair Art Museum, and her photographs are included in major institutional collections throughout the United States.