Francesca Stern Woodman (1958 –1981) was an American photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring either herself or female models.
Woodman was born in Denver, Colorado, to artists George Woodman and Betty Woodman (Artist of the day, October 3, 2020). 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. 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.
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 an 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 due to the failure of her work to attract attention and due to a broken relationship. She survived a suicide attempt in the autumn of 1980, after which she lived with her parents in Manhattan.
On January 19, 1981, Woodman took her life, 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".
Although Woodman used different cameras and film formats during her career, most of her photographs were taken with medium format cameras producing 2-1/4 by 2-1/4 inch (6x6 cm) square negatives. Woodman created at least 10,000 negatives, which her parents now keep. Woodman's estate, which is 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 10 inches (20 by 25 cm) or smaller, which "works to produce an intimate experience between viewer and photograph".
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." 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 (in an exhibition which will travel to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2012). In the 2011–2012 exhibitions, the selected video works, each 23 seconds to 3 minutes 15 seconds in length, were entitled "'Francesca' x 2," "Sculpture," "Corner," "Trace," and "Mask."
In 1999, a critic was of the opinion that Some Disordered Interior Geometries was "a distinctively bizarre book… a seemingly deranged miasma of mathematical formulae, photographs of herself and scrawled, snaking, handwritten notes." An acquaintance of Woodman wrote in 2000 that it "was a very peculiar little book indeed," with "a strangely ironic distance between the soft intimacy of the bodies in the photographs and the angularity of the geometric rules that covered the pages."
© 2020. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Francesca Stern Woodman or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only
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Ms. Francesca Stern Woodman
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Ms. Francesca Stern Woodman
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Polka Dots
1975-76
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Untitled
Providence, Rhode Island 1975–76
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Untitled
Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-78
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Untitled
Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-78
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Untitled
Providence, Rhode Island, 1975–78
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Untitled
Providence, Rhode Island, 1975–78
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Untitled
Providence, Rhode Island, 1975–78
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About Being My Model
Providence, Rhode Island, 1976
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And I had forgotten how to read music
1976
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Face
Providence, Rhode Island, Spring 1976
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House #3
Providence, Rhode Island, 1976
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Space²
Providence, Rhode Island, 1976
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Space²
Providence, Rhode Island, 1976
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Space²
Providence, Rhode Island, 1976
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Untitled
1976
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Untitled
Providence, Rhode Island, 1976
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Untitled
Providence, Rhode Island, 1976 |
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Untitled, from Polka Dots Series
Providence, Rhode Island, 1976
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From Angel Series
Roma, September 1977
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On Being an Angel #1
Providence, Rhode Island, 1977
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Self-portrait talking to Vince
Providence, Rhode Island, 1977
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Untitled
Concord, New Hampshire, 1977
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Untitled, from Angel Series
Rome, Italy, 1977
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Untitled
Rome, Italy, 1977-78
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Untitled
Rome, Italy, 1977-78
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Untitled
Rome, Italy, 1977-78
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Yet another leaden sky
Rome, 1977-78
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Self-deceit #1
Rome, Italy, 1978
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Untitled, from Eel Series
Venice, Italy, 1978
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It must be time for lunch now
New York, 1979
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Untitled
New York, 1979-1980
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Untitled
New York, 1979–80
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Untitled (FW crouching behind umbrella)
1980
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Space²
Providence, Rhode Island, 1976
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