Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman Biography 

Francesca Woodman was an American photographer known for her enigmatic and experimental black and white photographs of herself and others. In a career that was tragically cut short at the age of 22, she produced an important body of work that pushed the boundaries of what photography could be at the time. She was born in Denver, Colorado in 1958, the daughter of artists George Woodman and Betty Woodman. Growing up surrounded by artists and art of a variety of genres, the importance of creativity and being an artist was instilled in Francesca at a very young age.

Woodman’s fascination with and interest in photography took hold at boarding school at the Abbott Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. She went on to attend the Rhode Island School of Design in 1975, where she continued her studies in photography. It was during her time at RISD that she began to develop her unique style of photographing herself, often nude or partially clothed in empty or decaying interiors. She is sometimes hidden behind or obscured by props such as wallpaper, glass, and furniture. She experimented with long exposures and blurred images to create a sense of movement, passing time and fluidity. Her work innovatively explored themes of gender, identity, and the body.

Taking inspiration from surrealism and fashion, Woodman admired the work of fashion photographers Guy Bourdin and Deborah Turbeville. During her RISD honors study abroad program in Rome, Woodman frequently visited the Maldoror bookshop, which specialized in books on surrealism. Aesthetic similarities to surrealistic photography can be seen in Woodmans use of mirrors, doubles, shadows, gloves, hands, swans, fish, eels, masks, and sexual symbols to transform limited environments and create photographs filled with fantasy and experimentation.

An artist poised to make history even at a young age, one can only imagine what would have manifested if she had lived to have a full career. In just 9 years, from age 13 to age 22, Woodman produced a critically acclaimed body of work, most of it intimate and small in scale, consisting of around 800 prints. In the years since her death, her photographs continue to captivate and inspire viewers around the world. Today, she is widely regarded as one of the most important photographers of her generation, and her influence can be seen in the work of countless contemporary artists utilizing the medium of photography.

Woodman's legacy continues to be celebrated through exhibitions of her work, including a retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2011, a major solo exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 2012 and Francesca Woodman: On Being an Angel, organized by and presented at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm in 2015 which traveled throughout Europe. Her work is also included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art; Tate; Whitney Museum of American Art; Louisiana Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Metropolitan Museum in NY; Sammlung Verbund;National Gallery of Art; Centre Pompidou, and the Musée national d’art moderne,among others.