Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman rose to fame posthumously after committing suicide at the age of twenty-two. A large part of Woodman’s collection depicts self-portraits, many of which are nude with parts of the body obscured using her environment or by using slow shutter speeds. Some images appear quite haunting which may have led to Susan Bright’s view that:

‘It is difficult not to read Woodman’s many self-portraits – she produced over five hundred during her short lifetime – as alluding to a troubled state of mind. She committed suicide at the age of twenty-two.’ (Bright, 2010, p.25)

It would be easy to believe Bright’s opinion; many of Woodman’s images give the impression that she is trying to disappear, into walls, nature or merely obscuring parts of herself using mirrors but her friends and family remember Francesca very differently. Friends insist that Francesca was definitely not trying to disappear and Rachel Cooke quotes Betty Woodman, Francesca’s mother as saying:

‘Her life wasn’t a series of miseries. She was fun to be with. It’s a basic fallacy that her death is what she was all about, and people read that into the photographs.’ (Cooke 2014)

Woodman’s family state that she suffered from clinical depression for only around the last year of her life, yet her strangely haunting images are present from the age of thirteen when she received a camera as a gift from her father. Coming from a family of artists, Woodman was quite professional with regards to her art; her images were planned meticulously and drawn out beforehand and she believed in making at least one business related phone call per day – as her friend, Betsy Berne pointed out, ‘she knew how to play the game’.

Many of the images, which are seen as haunting and troubled, evoke a different response in those closest to Francesca. Early images taken at boarding school show her using tree roots and bark in her images; this could easily represent an affinity with nature rather than a young girl trying to disappear. Meticulous as she is with her art, Woodman must have good reason to present a graveyard in the background as she slides between the roots of a tree; it almost seems like she is burying herself. Another image taken around the same time however shows more humour as Woodman fashions a pair of gloves from tree bark.

Although it is possible that Woodman hid her dabbles with depression from those closest to her, it is also possible that she had a fascination with death common in many teenagers. Maybe her study of death in images such as her slow shutter speed ghost pictures normalised the phenomenon, making it a less scary prospect when depression hit.

The note left around the time of Woodman’s first attempted suicide almost backs up her father’s opinion that she could play the game, knowing the permanence left behind by death:

‘I would rather die young leaving various accomplishments, some work, my friendship with you, and some other artifacts intact, instead of pell-mell erasing all of these delicate things.’

In Woodman’s images I see remarkable talent in her use of camera settings, carefully planned environment and creativity in her use of everyday objects such as mirrors and wallpaper. I also see a clear, yet rather dark sense of humour.

 Although creating so many self-portraits could be considered quite narcissistic, Woodman’s parents argue that this was merely a matter of convenience, ones self being always available to model. I feel that her mirror portraits go some way to mock narcissism as many are shown with the mirror facing away from Woodman, creating an empty space where her face should be; again, these images could be seen either as humorous or as a woman trying to disappear. The fact that people read her images so startlingly differently shows just how talented she really is, creating works with meaning so personal to the individual viewer.

References

§  Bright, Susan (2010) Autofocus. The self-portrait in contemporary photography. London: Thames & Hudson

§  Cooke, Rachel (2014) ‘Searching for the real Francesca Woodman’. In: The Guardian [online] At: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/31/searching-for-the-real-francesca-woodman (Accessed on 15.05.15)

§   Gumport, Elizabeth (2011) The Long Exposure of Francesca Woodman [online blog] In: nybooks.com/ At: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/jan/24/long-exposure-francesca-woodman/ (Accessed on 15.05.15)