Francesca Woodman

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.

She attended public school in Boulder, Colorado, between 1963 and 1971, except for second grade, which she attended in Italy, where the family spent many summers between school years.

She began high school in 1972 at Abbot Academy, a private Massachusetts boarding school.

There, she began to develop her photographic skills and became interested in the art form.

Abbot Academy merged with Phillips Academy in 1973; Woodman graduated from the public Boulder High School in 1975.

Through 1975, she spent summers with her family in Italy in the Florentine countryside, where the family lived on an old farm.

Beginning in 1975, Woodman attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, Rhode Island.

She studied in Rome between 1977 and 1978 in a RISD honors program.

Because she spoke fluent Italian, she was able to befriend Italian intellectuals and artists.

She returned to Rhode Island in late 1978 to graduate from RISD.

Woodman moved to New York City in 1979.

After spending the summer of 1979 in Stanwood, Washington visiting her boyfriend at Pilchuck Glass School, she returned to New York "to make a career in photography."

She sent portfolios of her work to fashion photographers, but "her solicitations did not lead anywhere".

In the summer of 1980, she was an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

In late 1980, Woodman became depressed owing to the failure of her work to attract attention and because of a broken relationship.

She survived a suicide attempt in the autumn of 1980, after which she lived with her parents in Manhattan.

Her work continues to be the subject of much positive critical attention, years after her death at the age of 22, in 1981.

Woodman was born in Denver, Colorado, to artists George Woodman and Betty Woodman (née Abrahams).

Her mother was Jewish and her father was from a Protestant background.

Her older brother, Charles, later became an associate professor of electronic art.

Woodman took her first self-portrait at age thirteen and continued photographing herself until she died.

On January 19, 1981, Woodman killed herself, aged twenty-two, jumping out of a loft window of a building on the East Side of New York City.

An acquaintance wrote, "things had been bad, there had been therapy, things had gotten better, guard had been let down".

Her father has suggested that Woodman's suicide was related to an unsuccessful application for funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

A lackluster response to her photography and a failed relationship had pushed her into the deep depression.

Although Woodman used different cameras and film formats during her career, most of her photographs were taken with medium format cameras producing by 2 1⁄4-inch (6x6 cm) square negatives.

Woodman created at least 10,000 negatives, which her parents kept.

However, the only artist's book containing Woodman's photographs that was published during her lifetime was Some Disordered Interior Geometries. Released in January 1981 shortly before Woodman's death, it is 24 pages in length and is based upon selected pages from an Italian geometry exercise book.

On the pages, Woodman had attached 16 photographs and had added handwriting and white correction fluid.

A study of the book notes that Woodman occasionally re-drew a form "for emphasis or delight."

A reproduction of the book's original spreads shows purple-pink covers, pages which vary slightly in color, and traces of pink on several pages.

Although the published version of the book has purple-pink covers, the interior pages are printed using only black, white, and shades of gray.

Some of these videos were displayed at the Helsinki City Art Museum in Finland and the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation in Miami in 2005; the Tate Modern in London in 2007–2008; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2011.

Woodman created a number of artist's books, such as Portrait of a Reputation, Quaderno dei Dettati e dei Temi (Notebook of Dictations and Compositions), Quaderno (also known as Quaderno Raffaello), Portraits Friends Equasions, and Angels, Calendar Notebook.

Woodman's estate, which was managed by Woodman's parents, consists of over 800 prints, of which only around 120 images had been published or exhibited as of 2006.

Most of Woodman's prints are 8 by or smaller, which "works to produce an intimate experience between viewer and photograph".

Many of Woodman's images are untitled and are known only by a location and date.

She often took photographs indoors, finding abandoned and derelict spaces in which to create her photographic tableaux.

At RISD, Woodman borrowed a video camera and VTR and created videotapes related to her photographs in which she "methodically whitewashes her own naked body, for instance, or compares her torso to images of classical statuary."