Tuesday 3 February 2015

Francesca Woodman

Vicki who I met at the recent tutorial day Reading suggested I look at Francesca Woodman this evening on Flickr - I may have seen a couple of these images before but have just spent some time looking through what I could find online.

Briefly, she was born in Boulder, Colorado in 1958 and died in 1981 at the age of 22 when her second attempt at suicide succeeded. However before her early death she had created a body of work that is critically acclaimed and exhibited today.  Her parents were both artists and she studied photography as a teen and then at art school in Rome.  Although she grew up in the States she spent a lot of time in Italy as her family owned an old farmhouse there.

Woodman mainly used medium format cameras and nearly all of of her work is black & white.  She used models sometimes, especially in fashion work as she had tried to break into that and was frustrated at not being successful enough (goodness, she was only 22), but she also used herself as a model in much of her work.  Her face is often, although not always, obscured by blurring from long exposure or objects.  She also appears to meld into something: the furniture, building or other surroundings.  

She is said to be influenced by the Surrealists such as Man Ray and Andre Breton.  I think her influences may be quite useful for me and I should probably try to get hold of one of the books of her work.

  • Gothic fiction
  • The myth of Apollo and Daphne 
  • Surrealism
  • AndrĂ© Breton 
  • Man Ray 
  • Duane Michals.
  • Deborah Turbeville.
  • Max Klinger 

Information from Wikipedia

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