Francesca Woodman was an American photographer known for her black-and-white self-portraits. Despite her short career, which ended with her suicide at the age of 22, Woodman produced over 800 untitled prints. Influenced by Surrealism and Conceptual Art, her work often featured recurring symbolic motifs such as birds, mirrors, and skulls. The artist’s exploration of sexuality and the body is often compared to both Hans Bellmer and Man Ray. Woodman’s work is also characterized by her use of long shutter speed and double exposure, the blurred image creating a sense of movement and urgency, “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 photographed herself, often nude, in empty interiors. But her pictures are not traditional self-portraits. She is usually half hidden by objects or furniture or appears as a blur. The images convey an underlying sense of human fragility. This fragility is exaggerated by the fact that the photographs are printed on a very small scale – they seem personal and intimate.
Most of the photographs in the ARTIST ROOMS collection come from Francesca’s former boyfriend Benjamin P. Moore. She gave him the photographs, and many of them include intimate messages written in their margins. The messages become part of the artwork.
THE ‘DIE YOUNG’ EFFECT
Those who die young are always something of an enigma, leaving us with questions of what might have been had they lived. Suicide is a taboo subject but one that draws fascination, especially when the person is well known and talented. Just think of Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse or Sylvia Plath. Like them, Francesca died young, aged just twenty-two and left behind an exceptional legacy. Her images capture a life cut short which makes them sad and poignant today. Her ghostly presence in the photographs, whether blurred, partially hidden, obscured, camouflaged, fragmented or disguised is intense and powerful. It is sometimes disturbing and most of all, intimate.
http://www.artnet.com/artists/francesca-woodman/6
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/francesca-woodman-10512/finding-francesca
The Images Collection 