Francesca Woodman
1958–1981
As a student at the Rhode Island School of Design in the late 1970s, Francesca Woodman developed an experimental photographic practice rooted in performative self-portraiture. Taking her own body as her primary subject and favoring dilapidated interiors as settings, Woodman would position herself behind scraps of peeling wallpaper, within glass casements, or posed among taxidermy, alternately nude or clothed in vintage dresses.
After completing her undergraduate degree, Woodman moved to New York and sought commercial work as a fashion photographer. During a residency at the MacDowell Colony in July 1980, she began to experiment with outdoor settings and materials found in nature. Untitled (MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire) shows the artist from the waist up with one arm raised and a fox fur draped over the opposite shoulder, her face partially blurred as it turns aside. Juxtaposing her own skin and hair with those of plants and animals, she explores the echoing forms and contrasting textures of her subjects. Like many of the objects that comprise Woodman’s visual vocabulary— which contains a litany of references to Surrealism and Gothic literature—the fox fur is charged with erotic symbolism. In one of her last works, a fur is wrapped tightly around the artist’s neck in a more menacing gesture as she gazes directly into the camera. Woodman committed suicide in 1981 at the age of twenty-two. Although her work did not garner much recognition during her lifetime, Woodman’s brief but prolific career gained much posthumous attention after a 1986 exhibition of her photographs.
Introduction
Francesca Stern Woodman (April 3, 1958 – January 19, 1981) was an American photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring either herself or female models.
Many of her photographs show women, naked or clothed, blurred (due to movement and long exposure times), merging with their surroundings, or whose faces are obscured.
Her work continues to be the subject of much positive critical attention, years after her death at the age of 22, in 1981.
Wikidata identifier
Q242308
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed April 24, 2025.
Roles
Artist, photographer
ULAN identifier
500084070
Names
Francesca Woodman
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed April 24, 2025.
