Anne Sager: The Artist As Photographer

A strong connecting thread of warm color ties together Anne Sager's paintings and photographs. And when she gave up painting to concentrate exclusively on photography, it is easy to see the urge of the born colorist in her decision to opt for color photography over black and white.

"Enough black and white snobbism," she says with enthusiasm. "I love color."

Warm browns and ochers, a particular shade of chalky pink, rust, amber, Vermont-barn red - it's exciting to see an artist's sensual favorites reappear like a signature over the years, whether in a close-up shot of plumage, a junkyard still life, or a candid shot of a plump matron in a satin teddy.

Best In Show

This is the first year photographs have been allowed in Guild Hall's annual Artist Members Exhibit, now showing there, and Ms. Sager's print of two old gas pumps won the overall Best in Show prize - more food for thought on the theme of artist as photographer.

Ms. Sager started painting as a child in Westchester and had a painting included in an adult art show by the time she was 12. She continued to study art and to paint during her first marriage, which produced four children.

There were two things that made her change course and swap the chimerical world of the paintbrush for the decisive click of the shutter. When her daughter was 4, she tried to paint the child's portrait as Renoir would have done.

"I couldn't do it," she said flatly. "So I bought a camera, and that's what started it."

The second catalyst was the ending of her first marriage and her remarriage to her art teacher, a talented artist named Manfred Schwartz.

"There wasn't room for two painters in the house," said Ms. Sager.

As it turned out, there wasn't room for photography either. Soon after the marriage her husband fell ill, and she was unable to return to her work until after his death. They were married for only four years.

If her life had been shaken up by sudden tragedy, then her photography was shaken from the family-portrait rut by an article she chanced to read on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times. The writer was the wife of a migrant farmer.

Migrant Workers

Ms. Sager could not forget her description of her bleak existence.

"I was so moved by it that I had to go and see for myself," she said. For four years she traveled to Florida to take photographs of migrant workers, an undertaking that resulted in her first exhibit, at Ashawagh Hall. (She now shows with the Arlene Bujese Gallery in East Hampton.)

By then, Ms. Sager had married her third husband, the psychiatrist Clifford Sager (they have eight children between them; two sons-in-law are photographers). In 1979 she had her first show in New York City, at the Neikrug Gallery, of photographs taken on a trip to China.

Journeys to Morocco and India produced further series but also made her aware that she wanted more from the camera than it was giving.

"I'd got a little bored," she said. "So I started to experiment with pure color. I made masks and tried to recreate the memories of trips by using my own palette of colors, combining painting and photography."

When the process worked, she was very pleased with the results, she said. But the trouble was that it was really hit-and-miss.

"Working in the darkroom, not being able to see the colors as you worked, meant you never knew how they were going to come out."

"Ripple" Photos

Then she discovered the computer.

"I'm addicted," she said. "You can change anything you like: color, shape, tone, sharpness."

She showed a couple of prints to demonstrate. In one, of trees leaning over Town Pond, she indicated how she had changed the color, softened the focus, and elongated the drooping branches. The changes were extremely subtle, but they were enough to enhance the overall mood of melancholy and winter.

In the other, the ripples on a pond had been orchestrated and shepherded until they formed a more painterly image. To the casual eye, the changes were undetectable.

These ripple photographs, where photography edges towards painting, contrast interestingly with the pastel seascapes by Brooke Chapman currently at the Lizan Tops Gallery, where waves and ripples assume a photographic quality.

An American In Prague

Since 1977, Ms. Sager and her husband have spent part of their time in a house at the end of a spit of land jutting out into Three Mile Harbor. It's an artist's paradise, where tranquillity alternates with fierce storminess. On a recent bitingly cold morning, the harbor's wind-lashed waves looked as if they might come bursting through the picture windows.

The photographer has been coming to the East End since she was a teenager and it is here that she gets to demonstrate her other interest - poetry. Ms. Sager has been a member of the East End Poetry Workshop since 1988; no sooner did her visitor leave, in fact, than she set off to read in Bridgehampton.

She is a member also of Professional Women Photographers, which had a group show in Prague two years ago. Ms. Sager was the only one to travel there for the opening.

"It was my Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame," she laughed. "Fifty journalists turned up for an interview with me."

East Village Collages

Over the years, Ms. Sager's photographic muse has elbowed her from one theme to another. Hanging on the wall of her living room are three 40-by-30-inch closeups of a duck's plumage, taken with fast film and a close autofocus lens at the East Hampton Nature Trail. The scale is so large that the prints almost become abstract, except that you can see the finest detail of each feather.

On another wall are a number of photo collages, some of them drawn from a series that Ms. Sager did of scenes in Manhattan's East Village. They were exhibited at the International Center of Photography in Manhattan and the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts.

"I was working with my Hasselblad and a tripod on the street," said Ms. Sager, "when two women went by. I heard one of them say to the other disgustedly, 'That's what's happening to our neighborhood - artistes!' "

Ms. Sager seems to love the changes that age brings about - the New York City photos focus on faded walls, ancient paint, worn metal and wood, the grime of life - and she positively coos when the word "junkyard" comes up. Photographs taken at a local one show those same warm colors of rust and dying metal.

Women Over 50 In Lingerie

"I told the owner, 'You have the most beautiful place in East Hampton.' He thought I was crazy."

It is age that is the subject of what is certainly her most riveting series - women over 50 in lingerie.

Ms. Sager recounted how she had gone shopping with a friend who turned up for the expedition in a black satin bustier and tight red pants.

"Cellulite and all," said Ms. Sager. "I said 'You look just like a Richard Lindner - you must let me take your photo!'"

One photo led to another - she seems to have many sporting friends who didn't mind letting it all hang out, so to speak - and, as Ms. Sager explains it, the rationale behind them is that "it ain't over till it's over."

One, an elegant member of the "ladies who lunch" crowd, is wearing a chic hat and a fur stole - and nothing else but fishnet tights and high heels.

Another plump model sports a hat and a feather boa and spills generously from a mauve satin teddy (this shot ended up in the prestigious Graphis book "Nudes").

It's a wonderful, funny, life-affirming bonanza.