Francesca Woodman
a Photographer with an intimate character.
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FRANCESCA WOODMAN
Selfportrait, Photography taken by Francesca Woodman
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Francesca Woodman produced universally commanding and profound images from the age of thirteen. Born into a family of artists, art was her first language. She experienced early exposure to a plethora of exemplary creative people along with countless potential historical, literary, and theoretical influences. Woodman worked with traditional photographic techniques but was consistently performative and experimental. Many of her works are multi-media, including drawings, selected objects, and sculptures within her photographs. Settings may vary from confined interiors to the expansive outdoors, but Woodman herself is always there. Typically the sole subject, and often naked, she can be found caught entwined within a landscape or edging out of the photographic frame. Interested in the limits of representation, the artists body is habitually cropped, endlessly concealed, and never captured. Woodman was acutely aware of the evanescent nature of life and of living close to death. She positions the self as too limitless to be contained, and thus reveals singular identity as an elusive and fragmentary notion.
“I feel like I am floating in plasma. I need a teacher or a lover. I need someone to risk being involved —with me. I am vain and I am so masochistic” – Francesca Woodman
FRANCESCA WOODMAN
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chapter i
Her Biography Francesca Woodman was born in Denver Colorado on April 3, 1958 into a family of artists who instilled in her art a priority, something serious in life, valued as a religion. Her mother, Betty Woodman, was a sculptor and ceramist, and her father, George Woodman was a ceramist, painter and photographer. Her brother, Charles Woodman, devoted himself to video art and Francescas childhood was spent in Boulder, a Colorado town, where she was educated in a public school. Between 1965 and 1966, thanks to a scholarship granted to Francescas father, the whole family lived in Florence, where Charles and Francesca went to primary school and learned Italian. The Woodmans bought a house in Antella, a village in the Tuscan countryside frequented by artists and exponents of high society. Later, this
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house would become the familys summer home for the next few years. Francesca was introduced to art as a child. At first, through painting but her interest in photography awakened at the early age of 13 her father gave her a camera, specifically a Yashica reflex. From this, she started with her first works, already adopting a characteristic style, almost always photographing in black and white, with a square format, and giving priority to the illumination to, through it, manage to focus the attention on a main and normally unique subject in the scene. All these characteristics can be found in his first photograph Self-Portrait at thirteen, revealing a complete statement of intent in his future style. For her, art was not just a lifestyle, but rather a way of thinking. She is considered a prodigy. Francesca started taking photography classes at the end of the sixties, as well as socializing with a group of young artists related to the magazine Criss-Cross Art Communication. In her childhood, we can glimpse her interest towards literature, more specifically towards the novels of the Victorian period from which she extracted such symbolic references as Virgina Woolf, Gertrude Stein or Henry James. Later, these literary influences will be reflected in future photographs. Francesca was characterised by her extravagant dressing, obtaining pieces of clothing from other periods from flea markets. It was during this period that Francesca managed to enter the Abbot Academy in Andover, more specifically in Massachusetts. At this time photography became her passion, turning her room into a professional studio. From 1975 to 1979 he was a student at the Rhode Island School.
Francesca Woodman Life , Art and Death
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This page Selfportraits, Photographies taken by Francesca Woodman Previous page Selfportraits, Photographies taken by Francesca Woodman Gosthly, seductive, distinguished selfportraits.
FRANCESCA WOODMAN
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Providence - Rome Moving to Italy, her studies at Honnors programme. This university is recognized as one of the oldest art schools in the United States. At this school he met the photographer Aaron Siskind, who is on the faculty. He also discovers the work of other great artists in his field such as Man Ray or Daune Michals. From her first year, Francesca stands out for her artistic skills. While studying in Providence, she moves to Pilgrim Mills, an industrial building that serves as her studio. She was accepted into the Honours Programme which allowed her to live for a year on the school premises at Palazzo Cenci in Rome.11 Having lived in Italy before, she had no problem adapting to its culture and language. She met and joined a group of artists linked to the Maldoror Gallery and Bookstore. The bookstore was a meeting place for young artists, because its owners Giuseppe Casetti and Paolo Missigoi were attracted to all those related to the avant-garde movements, more specifically, those related to futurism, surrealism and symbolism. It was the owners who managed to get Woodman into an exhibition of five young artists at the Ugo Ferranti Gallery, where she was the only American participating. This becomes her first individual photography exhibition anywhere . Francescas only obligation at this stage was to attend art history classes. This is decisive as she begins to expand and experience her art beyond the student works. It is in Rome where some of her most well known works to date come to light, such as On Being an Angel, Glove Serie, Self-deceit. During her stay in the Italian capital 19771978 she was influenced by the history and art of Roman decadence, maturing as a photographer and discovering photography as a means of expression through the body.
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In her photographs one began to glimpse a predefined style characterized by decadence through empty walls, closed spaces and ancient objects. The unique subject in his photographs was a predominant characteristic that he accentuated thanks to the treatment of light in space. His photographs reformulate the image of women. Finally, in the autumn of 1978 he finishes his last semester at the Rhode Island School of Design and produces the exhibition Swang Song, at the Woods-Gerry Gallery. In this exhibition we must emphasize the eccentric composition of her works
New York - Washington Moving back to the USA near to exopose her work.
in space, because we find some of them almost touching the ceiling, and others on the floor, each one combining different sizes. They are influenced by a surrealist and futurist style which she soaked up during her stay in Rome. Woodman was among the first generation of photography graduates in the United States. In 1979 he moved to New York, where he wanted to pursue a career in photography. Sloane Rankin wanted to make his friends work known, but was unable to convince gallery owner Holly Solomon, who considered Francescas work promising but not sufficiently developed to exhibit it. Woodamn spent that same summer in Stanwood, Washington to visit her partner, Benjamin Moore who was studying at the Pilchuck Glass School. It was there that he created a photographic series on domestic themes. When he returned to New York, he tried to make his work known and managed to hold a few exhibitions at the Daniel Wolf Gallery and show his cyanotype work at the Alternative Museum. As her work quietly expanded, she began to work in areas that at first seemed far
Woodman returned again and again to —the ways which her camera worked to displace any essence of identity
The fleetingness of presence always touching the limit of absence. Francesca Woodman, Untitled photograph, 1975-1978. Gelatin silver print. George Lange Collection. Image courtesy George Lange Estate of Francesca Woodman, Charles Woodman.
1975 —1978
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removed from her photographic style, but many of them were intrinsically related to the art world. She was a model for painters, assistant to photographers and secretary. But the work that caused her most interest was fashion photography, which allowed her to continue to practice her profession and earn money. It was in this field of advertising and fashion that she discovered the work of Debo-
Analysing - Work Ghosltly, seductive, distinguished portraits.
rah Turbeville, who was known for placing models in gothic-melodramatic settings such as buildings or desolate or dark corridors. Woodman was imbued with this style which he later reflected in his future photographs. Francesca sent various portfolios of her work to fashion photographers, but it did not result in anything. In the summer of 1980 she did an artist residency at McDowel Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. There she created a series of photographs where she explored nature and the resources it gave her to complement her work. She also experimented with her own body in this same project to get to deal with themes about something higher, says the letter she wrote to her friend Suzanne Santoro, who lives in Rome. At this time, his artistic creation was much more meticulous and he elaborated in a more methodical way the composition, from sketches previously created, to work the narrative of his images. Francesca also produced six books, the most notable of which originated in 1981 and is called Some Disordered Interior Geometries, because it is the only one she ever published during her lifetime and which she began to work . The artist primarily worked in series of black and white photographs. Her palette reaches from a rich black to a
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brilliant white and seams to play with every shade of grey the color has to offer. George Woodman describes his daughters work as organised drama. Sensual, playful and sometimes obscure, Woodmans pictures explore the human body, but always in relation to its surroundings. She mixes elements of theatre and performance and seems close in spirit to surrealism.. Except for these representations of movement, the photographs are very precise and allow the viewer to see every little detail of the decor. Woodmans photographs can give a first impression of emptiness, but upon closer inspection, their sharpness unveils details in the clothing, furniture or walls. Polka Dots 1976 for example, shows the artist in front of a white wall as she kneels, looking directly into the camera. The poor state of the house creates an almost ornament like pattern on the floor. The dirt and tapestry on the wall cause the eye to look at the whole picture. If Francesca Woodman is interested in representing the body, she pays as much attention to the surrounding area. The different materials cloth, stone, soil, wood or even hair, are represented with an extreme attention to detail, perpective and blurriness. It is understandable that Francesca Woodmans work and her life are rarely
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see the dematerialisation and disappearance of the body, more precisely Woodmans body, in her pictures. A video taken by the artist while creating the body print on the floor shows her giggling and happy about the beautiful impression she has just created. She produces a trace, more precisely, she concentrates on the appearance of the body and not on its disappearance In late 1980, Woodman became depressed due to the failure of her work to attract attention and due to a broken relationship. She survived a suicide attempt in the autumn of 1980, after which she lived with her parents in Manhattan. On January 19, 1981, Woodman took her life, aged twenty-two, jumping out of a loft window of a building on the East Side of New York City An acquaintance wrote, things had been bad, there had been therapy, things had gotten better, guard had been let downHer father has suggested that Woodmans suicide was related to an unsuccessful application for funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. A lackluster response to her photography and a failed relationship had pushed her into the deep depression.
Short life - Death A dark angel whose wings fell off at the end.
analysed separately. The question remains however, if Woodmans imagery reflects her interior and can therefore be read as the product of a psychologically sick person. It seems too simple to read her body of work like the diary of a depressed young woman. One of her well-known pictures, showing Woodman sitting naked on a chair next to the impression of a body on the floor, constitutes an interesting example. Critics often
Previous page Selfportraits, Photographies taken by Francesca Woodman
“Am I in the picture? Am I getting in or out of it? I could be a ghost, an animal or a dead body, not —just this girl standing on the corner” – Francesca Woodman
FRANCESCA WOODMAN
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chapter ii
Outstanding Work Although Woodman used different cameras and film formats during her career, most of her photographs were taken with medium format cameras producing 2-1-4 by 2-1-4 inch 6x6 cm square negatives. Woodman created at least 10,000 negatives, which her parents now keep.Woodmans estate, which is managed by Woodmans parents,consists of over 800 prints,of which only around 120 images had been published or exhibited as of 2006.Most of Woodmans prints are 8 by 10 inches to 20 by 25 cm or smaller, which works to produce an intimate experience between viewer and photographs. Many of Woodmans images are untitled and are known only by a location and date. She often took photographs indoors, finding abandoned and derelict spaces . Woodman created a number of artists
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books, such as Portrait of a Reputation, Quaderno dei Dettati e dei Temi Notebook of Dictations and Compositions, Quaderno also known as Quaderno Raffaello, Portraits Friends Equasions, and Angels, Calendar Notebook. However, the only artists book containing Woodmans photographs that was published during her lifetime was Some Disordered Interior Geometries. Released in January 1981 shortly before Woodmans death, it is 24 pages in length and is based upon selected pages from an Italian geometry exercise book. On the pages, Woodman had attached 16 photographs and had added handwriting and white correction fluid. A study of the book notes that Woodman occasionally re-drew a form for emphasis or delight. A reproduction of the books original spreads shows purple-pink covers, pages which vary slightly in color, and traces of pink on several pages. Although the published version of the book has purple-pink covers, the interior pages are printed using only black, white, and shades of gray. In 1999, a critic was of the opinion that Some Disordered Interior Geometries was a distinctively bizarre book a seemingly deranged miasma of mathematical formulae, photographs of herself and scrawled, snaking, handwritten notes.An acquaintance of Woodman wrote in 2000 that it was a very peculiar little book indeed, with a strangely ironic distance between the soft intimacy of the bodies in the photographs and the angularity of the geometric rules that covered the pages.A 2006 essay described the book as a three-way game that plays the text and illustrations for an introduction to Euclid against Woodmans own text and diagrams, ations, poetic and humorous, analytical.
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Selfportrait At Thriteen — 1972
Untitled, Boulder, Rhode Island — 1976
In this self-portrait at the age of thirteen, one of Woodmans first, she photographs herself turning her head away from the camera in a debut gesture of defiance against usual portrait photography in which we expect to see the face of the sitter. Woodman holds a rod to release the shutter which once intentionally blurred and out of focus transforms to become an otherworldly shard of darkness. Her face is covered completely by her hair and the space around her is composed of fragmented elements, including a door, the under lit bench upon which she sits, and an empty chair.
This picture, taken in Boulder, Woodmans hometown in Rhode Island, features the artist intertwined with the roots of a tree. Immersed in the water, the artists horizontal naked body is supported by the undergrowth. Her long hair floats, whilst her fair skin provides good contrast to the dark shadows cast all around. In the background there are gravestones, revealing that the tree is situated on the edge of a burial site. Woodmans hair, her legs, and the roots of the tree all become serpent-like in their curves. As such the picture recalls the Christian creation story and Woodman becomes associated with Eve. Like the first woman on the earth she is an active agent for change, and pursues the forbidden fruit of knowledge to both a creative and destructive end.
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From Space2 series, Providence — 1976 Untitled, Boulder, Rhode Island — 1978
Taken in black and white, Space2 features Woodman standing naked against a wall between two large windows, merging her body entirely with the surrounding environment by covering parts of herself with discarded wallpaper. She is working in a derelict building and art historian Chris Townsend has suggested that the work may have been directly inspired by a Victorian novella called. The Yellow Wallpaper 1892, in which a woman is forcibly confined to a room by her husband.
This picture, taken by Francesca Woodman is created an extraordinary body of work, exploring gender, selfhood and the body in relation to its surroundings. Woodman often experimented with a slow shutter speed, which slightly blurred and distorted her body as it moved throughout the exposure, creating a haunting, almost ghost-like effect. Her ethereal presence draws our attention to traditional depictions of the body, forms of portraiture and self-portraiture, illuminating the desire for self-preservation against the passing of time.
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Expositions - Museums Furthermore than the US, Fondation H. C. Bresson
This page Selfportraits, Photographies taken by Francesca Woodman Edit, Expositions. On Being an Angel Berlin, 2020
The Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson is pleased to be presenting the dazzling work of American photographer Francesca Woodman 1958-1981. Rooted in constant exploration of herself and the medium, Woodmans insightful, deeply intimate approach turned her photography into a second skin. In her images she made almost exclusive use of her own body. It is a matter of convenience, she explained, I am always available. Despite her premature passing at the age of twenty-two, Woodman left an impressive body of work. And while the pictures betray a host of influences ranging from Symbolism to Surrealism, her own talent was as prodigious as it was precocious. Francesca Woodman explores her own image although her inspiration drives her to navigate into the photographic technic and the act of writing. Her staging in desolated rooms, the ghostly body presence in the middle of spaces in decay, of houses on the threshold of demolition outreached the pure self-portrait genre. Preps and setups disclose assumed surrealist influences, glasses, mirrors, peeling paint, ripped wallpaper. The body is to be fiddled with, fragmented until mingling with its environment and raises issues about metamorphosis and genre. These insolent and disconcerting images of a rare intensity arouse the ephemeral, the elusiveness of time. The artist photographs are part of international museum collections such as the Tate Modern in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The first travelling exhibition of her works has been organized in 1986 and her main European exhibitions in the 90s. La Fondation Cartier and Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie Arles have been the first and
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last institutions to present a retrospective of her work in France, in 1998. The exhibition including a hundred prints, video and documents has been organized in collaboration with the Estate of Francesca Woodman in New York and Anna Tellgren, the curator. After the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and FOAM in Amsterdam, the European tour of the exhibition will end up at the Moderna Museet in Malmo.
Expositions - Museums On Being an Angel, Berlin year 2020.
A nude body dancing in front of a mirror clothespins that pinch a womans flesh and skin. What could she be doing. Francesca Woodmans photographs document performances in which the camera is the only audience. But they are also complex and formally balanced compositions consisting mainly of female bodies, which the artist arranges in disintegrating interiors with props such as lilies, seashells, and eels feminine and masculine symbols that she appropriates, reinterprets, and deconstructs. The artist usually appears in the photographs herself, and makes skillful use of masks and fragmentation as a means to play with identity bodies are cropped by the image frame, and the parts that remain visible can seldom be identified as belonging to a specific person. The individual body appears physically present but at the same time angelically immaterial. Motion blurring, reflections, and figures that disappear into the background evoke a sense of melancholy, the surreal, and occasionally also the claustrophobic. Through her use of familiar historical motifs from culture, art, and photography, Woodman explores womens numerous roles the ingenue, the beauty, the seductress, but also the universal feminine as a medium for spiritualism and art.
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Room, Expositions. On Being an Angel. Berlin, 2020.
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//2020
“A lot of photography is making records of people, as objects, friends. It’s like —organizing a wardrobe in terms of size” – Francesca Woodman
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chapter iii
Her Actitude Her Actitude in the artistic contest. Experts have always tried to determine which artistic movement is represented by the photographic works of Francesca Woodman. First of all, it should be clarified that Francesca had a very independent style and she herself did not take refuge in any style or group, but it should be stressed that it is true that in order to create her works she took influences from her surroundings and all what comes behind.. Her works acquire a late 19th century Romantic style. This type of aesthetic can be related to the Victorian photography of Oscar Gustav Rejlander, who was dedicated to self-portrait and nude photography. Later, in order to obtain her works, she made preliminary sketches and then manipulated the negatives. Knowing that for Francesca it was a habitual reading of
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Victorian novels, we can see in her images spectral female figures, trapped behind the walls, of the wallpaper with their clothes wrinkled or directly naked. A story more than told, insinuated. In Woodmans work we find factors that lead us to think that he was influenced by the photographer Man Ray. He looks for a romantic place in the naked body of the woman, a search for psychological love. The direct influence on Francescas work is undeniable because of the elements of the amorphous body, the nude, and finally, the disoriented rotation of the image. The surrealist details in her work, like those of Woodman, are undeniable. Francesca as Man Ray or Mercet Oppenheimen drew an opaque line between eroticism and abstraction. Thus they blurred the ideas of sex and eroticism in art. Francesca Woodman became acquainted with the symbolist work of the German artist Max Klinger during her stay in Rome. The themes that struck Francesca directly were those of fantasy and desire. So she began to substitute objects for phallic or sexual literal representations. Finally, we find the artist Deborah Turbeville, famous for her appearances in Vogue with an independent bet in the world of fashion, challenging the clichs of the field. became acquainted with the symbolist work of the German artist Max Klinger during her stay in Rome. Thus they blurred the ideas of sex and eroticism in art. Francesca Woodman became acquainted with the symbolist work of the German The themes that struck Francesca directly were those of fantasy and desire Francesca tuned in to Victorian gothic clothes and settings. The Woodman parents found an unsent letter that their daughter had written to Deborah requesting to be her assistanta romantic place in the naked body.
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Theme Francesca Woodmans work is easily identifiable thanks to aspects such as black and white, the self-portrait, collapsed and melancholic settings. She was a turning point within self-referentiality, which is why the study of it from the 90s onwards has been of great interest. In order to understand Francescas work we will refer to three main elements that completely determine her own work. At all times we can see elements that characterize the work of Francesca Woodman such as black and white or the nude, but if we look beyond, all this is created and grouped in her photograph to look for her ownself. It shows the need to investigate in the being, to search in the experience. In the book Francesca Woodman and the Kantian Sublime 2010, by Claire Raymond, the author explains the importance .
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Recognition This theme of recognition gives the work a symbolic meaning. The photographer tries to investigate and find her identity, which means that all the photographic series she produced are games and mechanisms to extract information from herself. In this continuous search, she turns to her emotions to project them through her own creation from images. Her body, friends and family, the scenery, the spaces and the objects become the channels that seek the identification of the artist. They become tools to reveal something hidden. The exercise of self-portraiture helps Woodman to duplicate herself in order to see herself in the third person. The photographer was completely immersed in this game, camouflaging herself, covering her face, making the images unclear, we can thus deduce.
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Body The most common resource in Francesca Woodmans photographs is her own body as a tool to project her emotions. Normally, the gesture of coming out naked in front of the camera is equivalent to representing oneself without masks, completely representing what one is and exposing ones identity in public. Francescas nudes are subtle. She gives a treatment to her own body that is closer to romanticism and spirituality. Her body is represented both naked and dressed and in different spaces, as part of her personal research. The portrait of her body is ethereal trying to allude to a higher plane than the earthly one. His body is almost a ghostly vision. Her inability to recognise herself meant that she had to make various reports in a convulsive way a higher plane to recognise herself meant that she had to make.
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Camouflage The action of camouflaging is synonymous with disguising yourself, pretending to be something you are not really. We can see this theme reflected in the avant-garde, especially in the surrealist movement, and it is based on the mimesis with the environment that implies not being able to be seen. In several photographic series we find Woodmans body represented hiding and playing and linking it with its environment. The objects and walls take over his body showing us the melancholic facet of his photographs. Her aim is to recognise herself in her surroundings. The untiring relationship she wants to achieve with decadent spaces, refers us to a feeling of human fragility before the passing of time and the loss of a past. The photographs are imbued nostalgia.abounds in all her work as Francesca.
ow we come to th assage. You can jus ee a little peep o he passage in Loo ing-glass House, i ou leave the doo f our drawing roo ide open: and it’ ery like our passag s far as you can see nly you know it ma e quite different o
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Woodman - References. What influenced her actitude and consecuently her work. Among other factors, critics and historians have written that Woodman was influenced by the following literary genre, myth, artistic movement, and photographers. Gothic fiction. She is reported to have identified with Victorian heroines. Many of the stories feature a female figure that is often forced into solitude, then they turn mad. The Gothic style is full of symbols of tombs, mirrors, demons and angels. The myth Apollo Daphne, as evidenced by photographs in which Woodman is entangled in tree roots or wears birch bark on her arms. Surrealism. She studied surrealism immensely and studied the workings of Duane Michals. For example, Woodman followed the movements tradition of not explaining work and demonstrated a desire to crack the code of appearances. Andre Breton. In particular his Nadja. Man Ray. A series of his photographs of Meret Oppenheim, his surrealist works. Duane Michals. Woodmans and Michals work share features such as blurring, angels, and handwriting in common. Deborah Turbeville. Woodman had admired Turbevilles work, and had compiled an artists book for Turbeville Quaderno Raffaello which contained a written request for the older photographer to telephone her. Woodman was exposed to the symbolic work of Max Klinger whilst studying in Rome from 1977 to 1978 and his influence can clearly be seen in many photographic series, such as Eel Series, Roma 1977-78 and Angel Series, Roma 1977. In combining performance, play and self-exposure, Woodmans photographs create extreme and often disturbing psychological states. In concealing or encrypting her subjects she
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reminds the viewer that photographs flatten and distort, never offering the whole truth about a subject. Woodman worked closely with her friend George Lange, another alumni from Rhode Island School of Design. During a major exhibition held in honor of Woodman at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver Director Nora Burnett stated they made photographs together, they shared meals together, they experimented, explored and created together. A critic noted that this exhibition leaves out mention of her suicide.
Work - What exposed. What she reflected in her actitude was plasmed at work.
Instead of highlighting that event, which can dominate the discussion around her art output, this exhibition focuses on her early work, including playful and even ordinary moments from her life. It is understandable that Francesca Woodmans work and her life are rarely analysed separately. The question remains however, if Woodmans imagery reflects her interior and can therefore be read as the product of a psychologically sick person. It seems too simple to read her body of work like the diary of a depressed young woman. One of her well-known pictures, showing Woodman sitting naked on a chair next to the impression of a body on the floor, constitutes an interesting example.
Previous page Selfportrait, Taken by F. Woodman.
Francesca Woodman, Untitled, New York, Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery.
//1979-1980
“Then at one point, I did not need to translate the —notes; they went directly to my hands” – Francesca Woodman
FRANCESCA WOODMAN
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chapter iv
The Tribute In this chapter I propose an imaginative contribution with Francesca Woodman. I studied her, analyzed her, now I am begining to dream the surrealistic dream. I am working with her. I wonder what would she thought about this, maybe she could thought that I am in a state of absolutely madness. For sure she love madness, so she would love this too. Firslty,I will explain the steps I recapted to work exactly as she did. If you remember, dear reader, we have seen her references and her methodologies. In addition to her technique which I will try to imitate as much as possible but I will portray being faithful to myself. This comes from a challenge I set myself last year with my teacher Elisenda Fontarnau. She suggested to take a look at the work of this photographer who until then was unknown to me.
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It is a bizarre feeling to see this as I felt very similar to how she felt. Also what impressed me the most was that I understood her vision of things perfectly. Francesca Woodman had a great sensitivity to capture things and express them with her camera and even with her words. You will find in my photographs portraits, photographs of my own body, of my friends. But always with that long exposure in the camera that depersonalizes the person in the portrait or just hides it from the eyes of those who observe. As I said, this chapter is going to be quite different from the others, as it is not only about Woodman but also about me. I wrote a letter to Woodman imagining and telling her how much I want to work with her. You will see that it is quite intense and personal, so I would like you to be part of this, whoever is reading this. I invite you to be part of it even if you do not fully understand what is going on, but just be part of it. Imagine one day you can play a game like this, but it is not game anymore. You do understand what I am trying to mean, if your answer is not, do not worry, just keep reading and at one point I am sure you will be able to connect with it, with her and with me. Above all with us. Here ends the presentation of the chapter, but it is only the end of the presentation, there is still a lot to see, do not worry. On the next page we will take a closer look at what we need to do to work with her, with our beloved Woodman. Be patient, dear reader. Attend to the next page, this starts to seem interesting, I feel how you are starting to connect with this whole experience. Be patient, dear reader.Attend to the next page, this starts to seem interesting, I feel how you are starting to connect with this whole experience. Just be part of it. Just be part of it. Just be part of it. Just be part of it.
The American artist was a hugely influential black and white photographer. Here are some lessons you can learn from her work. Here we have gathered a selection of tips taken by Elisenda Fontarnau who willingly or unwittingly shot in the style pioneered by Woodman. This is only our homage to the artist, coupled with lessons you can learn from her.
1. Soft light 2. Be your own subject 3. Layer up 4. Tell stories 5. Embrace abstraction 6. Be weird
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Francesca Woodman unintentionally has become the best tool to express my emotions and my way of seeing life at this moment. A series of images to explore who I am and to look at myself through her eyes. A work to offer my humble tribute to one of the photographers that I admire the most and has influenced my way of looking through the lens.
Dear Francesca,
I’ve wanted to work with you since I met you. I know that it’s also been difficult for people to understand your way of seeing life, that’s why my intuition told me that we would make a good team. I had the need to let you into my mind, to get into yours, to feel what you felt and learn from your experience. So I have to thank you for agreeing. I've always felt that something didn’t fit in me, that I couldn’t find my place and the more I know you the more I see that we are together in that. I have always known that the only way for my mind to flow, was to flow with you, that my place was with you. Thanks Francesca. Thanks for letting me know you, for agreeing to meet me. It has been a real pleasure working with you. But dear friend, our farewell is not a matter of goodbye but see you soon. Cristina.
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Author
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Chapter i
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Chapter ii
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Chapter iii
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Chapter iv