Francesca Woodman, the body that vanishes
« American photographer (1958-1981), dead at 22, whose brief, ghostly body of work has marked contemporary photography. »
The daughter of two artists, Francesca Woodman began photographing at 13. At the Rhode Island School of Design, then in Rome where she spent a year, she developed a body of work almost entirely composed of self-portraits — her body nude or draped, in ruined interiors, long exposures that turned it blurred and ghostly.
Self-Deceit (Rome, 1978), House (Providence, 1976), On Being an Angel (1977): the images are small, square, black-and-white, contact-printed or barely enlarged. The female body dissolves, fuses with the wall, exits the frame, becomes memory and absence before having even been present.
Diagnosed with depression after an attempt in 1980, Francesca Woodman killed herself in January 1981 at 22, jumping from a Lower East Side building. She left about 800 negatives and one book, Some Disordered Interior Geometries (1981). Her critical rediscovery began in 1986 and has not stopped.