Background
Sonya Noskowiak was born on November 25, 1900, in Leipzig, Sachsen, Germany. Her father was a landscape gardener who instilled in her an awareness of the land that would later become evident in her photography.
Sonya Noskowiak was born on November 25, 1900, in Leipzig, Sachsen, Germany. Her father was a landscape gardener who instilled in her an awareness of the land that would later become evident in her photography.
In her early years, Sonya Noskowiak moved around the world while her father sought work in Chile, then Panama, before finally settling in Los Angeles, California in 1915. In 1919, she moved to San Francisco to enroll in secretarial school. Interested in photography at an early age, in 1925, Sonya Noskowiak would become a receptionist in Johan Hagemeyer's photographic studio in Los Angeles County.
In 1932 Sonya Noskowiak became an organizing member of the short-lived Group f/64. Noskowiak's works were shown at Group f/64's inaugural exhibition at San Francisco's M. H. de Young Museum; she had nine photographs in the exhibit. In the summer of 1933, she, along with Weston and Van Dyke, traveled to New Mexico for scenery shots. Her photographs Cottonwood Tree - Taos, New Mexico, and Ovens, Taos Pueblo, New Mexico both are from this trip and differ from her previous work. Later that summer, she had her first solo show at Denny-Watrous Gallery in Carmel. The exhibition included a series of photographs from New Mexico. Sonya Noskowiak held another solo exhibition at 683 Brockhurst in November. Between 1933 and 1940, she participated in a few of Group f.64 exhibitions.
Sonya Noskowiak and Weston broke up in 1935, Group f. 64 disbanded shortly thereafter. Perhaps, due to her frayed relationship with Weston and perhaps because other members of the group were going their separate ways. She also moved to San Francisco and opened a portrait studio this same year. This same year she moved to San Francisco to open a portrait studio on Union Street. In 1936, she was one of eight photographers, including Weston, selected for the California region of the Federal Art Project to document California during the Great Depression
Sonya Noskowiak also engaged in commercial work and commissions to make a living. After Groupf.64 dissolved, she spent the next year photographing California artists and their paintings, sculptures, and murals. These images then toured to a variety of public institutions. Though she continued to photograph as an artist, Noskowiak's livelihood from the 1940s was based on portraiture, fashion, and architectural images. She continued commercial photography up until the 1960s, photographing images for manufactures of lamps and stoves, as well as for architects.
Physical Characteristics: In 1965, Sonya Noskowiak was diagnosed with bone cancer, thus then ending her practice in photography. She lived another ten years before passing away on April 28, 1975, in Greenbrae, California.