Anne Noble

Anne Lysbeth Noble ONZM (born 1954) is a New Zealand photographer.

Born in Whanganui, Noble attended high school at the Roman Catholic girls' college, Erskine College, in Island Bay, Wellington, and Wanganui Girls' College. She completed a MFA (Honours - 1st class) at the Elam School of Fine Arts in 1983.

Noble's approach to her work involves 'prolonged observation and attentive watching'. She is known for working in photographic series. Her first major exhibition, The Wanganui, opened at the Sarjeant Gallery in 1982 and toured to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland, Hamilton and Te Manawa in Palmerston North. Writer Sheridan Keith described these works as 'a series of images of immense spirituality, serenity and intensity of feeling'.

'In the presence of angels – photographs of the contemplative life' (1988-1990) is a series of photographs documenting life inside a London convent. Noble lived with the Benedictine nuns in the silent order for an extended period.

'In My Father’s Garden' is a series of photographs that follow the artist’s father’s death, while the 'Hidden Lives' series capture the lives of elderly intellectually disabled people and their carers.

The series 'Ruby’s Room' (1998-2007) features close-up images of the photographer’s daughter’s mouth. The artist says that many of the best childhood moments go unrecorded, and that many of these ‘relate to pleasures and play around the mouth, moments of defiance and triumph, like managing to blow a really good bubble with bubble gum ... I wanted to magnify the colour, the spontaneity, the life, the fun and play, and all the things that I enjoyed as a mother.’ In 2010 the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa acquired 30 of the works from the series as a boxed portfolio, describing them as 'Standing alongside her Antarctic work [as] Anne Noble’s major body of photography from the 2000s'.

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