Francesca Woodman
*Untitled*, New York, 1979-80
Gelatin silver print
Image: 5-7/8 x 5-3/4 in. / 14.9 x 14.6 cm
Courtesy of Woodman Family Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery
©Woodman Family Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

By Elisabeth Biondi

Who was this person who made her body the focus of photographic action, who was provocative in her work, had a sophisticated eye and was endlessly resourceful? Was she narcissistic and vain? Was she mature beyond her age or was she innocent and child-like? Probably all of the above, and also beautiful. Friends who knew her during her final years in New York describe her in opposites; sweet but ruthless, bright and dark, sophisticated and naive, also intense and almost ferocious, hating to get older, clinging to her youth. She was 22 when she died.

Francesca Woodman
*Untitled*, Rome, Italy, 1977
Vintage gelatin silver print
Image: 5-1/4 x 5-1/4 in. / 13.3 x 13.3 cm
Courtesy of Woodman Family Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery
©Woodman Family Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Francesca Woodman was both precocious and prodigious. When she was thirteen, her father gave her a camera and her first pictures were impressive. She photographed herself, for-shadowing the remarkable series of photographs that established her as an artist before she turned 22. This is not totally surprising as she grew up with art around her, her mother, Betty Woodman, was a well-known ceramicist. Her father, George Woodman, was a painter. They owned a house in Tuscany, and, having spent so much time there, Francesca had an early exposure to Renaissance art. At their home in Boulder, Colorado, well-known artists, including David Hockney and Richard Serra, were regular visitors. Art and artists were part of her young life.

At RISD, where she was an undergraduate from 1975–1978, she studied photography, quickly establishing herself as a rising star. This body of work, along with the photographs she took during her junior year abroad in Rome, , and works she made while living in New York in 1979 and 1980, forms the core of the work she left behind when she committed suicide in 1981.

Francesca Woodman
*Untitled*, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976
Gelatin silver print
5 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. / 13.9 x 13.9 cm
Courtesy of Woodman Family Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery
© Woodman Family Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2021

The Director of the Wellesley College Museum, Ann Gabhart, took an intense interest in her work and in 1986 organized an exhibition which was also shown at the Hunter College Art Gallery in New York. Essays by two established art scholars became the pillars for the interpretation of her photography: Rosalind Krauss placed her work within the context of surrealism, and Abigail Solomon-Godeau within the canon of feminist art. Today, 37 years later, major exhibitions in New York, including at the Guggenheim Museum, and all over the United States and Europe, have been devoted to her work, catapulting her to fame as a major artist. In November 2021, an important exhibition will open at the Marian Goodman Gallery, which handles her estate: the fifth show at the gallery, it will feature newly available prints and archival material that has never been seen before.

Francesca Woodman is not the first female photographer to use her body in her photographs, nor is she the first woman who photographed herself nude, but none made their body so consistently both the subject and the object of their work. A dizzying number of poses, appearances, disappearances and positions prove that the focus on her body was the source of her creativity. Her body was her way to express herself visually. In her photographs the mood changes constantly, as often as the style of photography. Some images are dark and brooding, some whimsical, some light-hearted or dreamlike. Rarely are they straightforward and never are they conventional.

Some of her images look back in time, evoking gothic Victorian photography, others early 20th century photography, reminiscent of Bauhaus. Others cannot be categorized as they are original – purely her own vision. Woodman had a great sense of style. Sometimes she dresses her body, but more often she is nude, as she performs for the camera. Her body becomes the object of her photographs as she inserts it into spaces and locations and adds props. At a certain point, one is unaware of the fact that she is naked. What is public and what is private seems to be erased in her photographs.

Francesca Woodman
*From Space2*
Providence, Rhode Island, 1976
Gelatin silver print
6 3/8 x 6 3/8 in. / 16.1 x 16.1 cm
Courtesy of Woodman Family Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery
© Woodman Family Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2021.

The spaces Woodman inhabits in her photographs are varied and often messy. Props often seem arbitrary, although this is unlikely as she was fully in control of all of the details in her compositions, which are purposeful and untraditional. Looking at her photographs, one can recognize a number of photographers that may have inspired her work—a Brassai cafe scene, a Bellmer distorted torso, a Duane Michals disappearing act, a Bill Brandt nude. Man Ray’s surrealistic photography clearly influenced her, leading me to believe that she knew the history of photography as well as that of her contemporaries.

Francesca Woodman
*Untitled*, Italy, 1978
Vintage gelatin silver print
Image: 4-5/8 x 4-5/8 in. / 11.6 x 11.6 cm
Courtesy of Woodman Family Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery
©Woodman Family Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

She had an incredibly fertile source of creativity – constantly exploring ideas and rushing on to new thoughts. A considerable amount of her work grew from school assignments when she was a student at RISD. She worked in series, like her “Angels”, and she returned to some of those images later while living in Rome. Many artists expose a clear linear progression in their work; Woodman’s work, on the other hand, is like bubbling water, bursting into the air out of its confines. New York, where she lived after Italy, was challenging. She did not receive quick recognition for her photography and had trouble finding meaningful work. She toyed with the idea of working in fashion photography; she admired Deborah Turbeville, whose more personal work clearly aligns with hers.

Francesca Woodman
*Untitled*, Florence, Italy, c.1976
Vintage gelatin silver print
4-5/8 x 4-3/4 in. / 11.7 x 12.1 cm
Courtesy of Woodman Family Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery
© Woodman Family Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2021

We will never know why Francesca Woodman committed suicide at age 22, leaving behind a trove of negatives and prints. Her suicide created a dark allure around the mystery of her short and brilliant career, which may, at least partially, explain the wide interest in the many exhibitions of her work worldwide. Looking at her body of work, however, it is clear that she was extraordinarily talented; a prodigy whose mature work we will sadly never know.