Final Presentation

Francesca Woodman was born in 1958 in Denver, Colorado. She lived and worked in New York up until her death in 1981. Since 1986, her work has been exhibited widely 

At the age of thirteen Francesca Woodman took her first self portrait using a Yashica twin lens reflex camera given to her by her father. From then, up until her untimely death in 1981 where she committed suicide by jumping off a building in lower Manhattan age just 22.

Self portrait at thirteen, Boulder, Colorado, 1972-1975

She produced an extraordinary body of work and left an archive of about 800 images, many of which have still not been seen. 

She studied at Rhode Island School of Design from 1975-1979, receiving a grant to spend a year in Rome to continue her studies. 

Whilst there she had her first solo exhibited at a bookshop and gallery specialising in Surrealism and Futurism. 

Woodman has had solo exhibitions shown all over the world from 1976-2009. She has also had shown a variety of group exhibitions from 1977-2008.

Francesca Woodman has been called a Modernist and a Surrealist. Her work shows both of these traditions. As a young woman she photographed herself obsessively but often in her pictures she appears as a blur of movement or a half hidden figure, someone who is constantly trying to escape or hide. 

The end result is not a self portrait but a series of stills from a performance in which she plays with the notion of the self, disguising, transforming and defacing her own body. 

In her work people think that she might be playing with themes of identity and with photography, and in particular portrait photography, can play in constructing a fixed and therefore false identity. 

From Angel Series, Italy, Rome, 1977

From Angel Series, Italy, Rome, 1997-1978

Eel Series, Italy, Rome, May 1977- August 1978

House #3, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976

Space2, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1978

Untitled, Boulder, Colorado, 1972-1975

Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1976

Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1976

Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976

Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1976

Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1976

The time of her works production was in the 1970s, up until this point women were seen as objects. This was a time when women were beginning to express their own ideas and freedoms. Her images display her moving from adolescent to women-hood.

The camera she used while producing her work was a Yashica twin lens reflex camera. Francesca Woodman played complex games of hide and seek with her camera. In some of her images she shows herself fading into the background, merging with the wall under wallpaper, dissolving into the floor or flattening herself behind glass.

All her images are about women with the images being in a basic setting. Nearly all of her images are pictures with just her in them.

In her images there is very few where you see her as a whole person. Nearly always something is either covering her or she is blurred. 

Art critic Arther Danto said of Woodman's photographs, "It is impossible to view her work without being drawn into the vast questions it raises about life, art and the meaning and embodiment of sex..."

In Francesca Woodmans images the subject in nearly all of her images is herself. Sometimes in her images she also has some objects, for example a piece or mirror, glass or a door. 

She started taking her images at a young age and also died at a young age so all her photos are all of her in her youth. 

The locations that she uses in her images are set in a urban environment, looking at her images they look to be in a abandoned house.

In her images most of them look like they were took in the day because of all the natural light coming through the images. 

Looking at the technical side of her images and how she takes them you can see in all her images that there all in black and white, there are no coloured images. 

In her images the subject being herself looks like shes been lit using natural light only. By the look of her images there always seems to be a big window present that is letting all the natural light in. 

Francesca Woodman's images

In my images I tired to take my pictures in the style of Francesca Woodman and focusing on how in a lot of her images her body or face is blurred. 

Like Francesca Woodman who features in all of her images I used myself in all my images using a self timer on my camera.

Instead of copying exactly the same kind of location in my images I tried looking for somewhere which had the same effect but did not copy her work. 

My work is in a rural setting not a urban one but I used old fencing which connects my work with Francesca Woodman's. 

In my pictures I used a shutter speed of 1" and 1.3.

These are some of my favourite images and the images I am going to be using for my final eight.