Francesca Woodman

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Francesca Woodman (Denver, 3 aprile 1958 – New York, 19 gennaio 1981) è stata una fotografa statunitense.
Fu, nonostante una vita breve, un’artista fotografica influente e importante per gli ultimi decenni del XX secolo.
Appariva in molte delle proprie fotografie e il suo lavoro si concentrava soprattutto sul suo corpo e su ciò che lo circondava, riuscendo spesso a fonderli insieme con abilità. La Woodman usava in gran parte esposizioni lunghe o la doppia esposizione, in modo da poter partecipare attivamente all’impressionamento della pellicola. Nelle sue foto compaiono anche l’amica fotografa Sloan Rankin Keck e il compagno Benjamin Moore.
Originaria del Colorado, trascorse lunghi periodi in Italia. Con la macchina fotografica ritrasse nudi femminili in bianco e nero, talvolta con il volto oscurato, ottenendo effetti sfocati grazie al movimento ed al lungo periodo di esposizione, che conferiscono l’effetto di una fusione dei corpi con l’ambiente circostante. I critici riscontrano nelle sue immagini l’influenza del surrealismo poiché è manifesto in esse il desiderio di spezzare il codice delle apparenze;[1] inoltre l’artista manifestò l’adesione alla tradizione surrealista attraverso la volontà di non fornire spiegazioni sulle proprie opere.
Francesca Woodman crebbe in una famiglia di artisti, il padre George è un pittore mentre la madre Betty è una ceramista. Trascorse diversi anni e molte vacanze estive della sua infanzia a Firenze, dove frequentò il secondo anno di scuola elementare e prese lezioni di pianoforte. Scoprì la fotografia molto giovane, sviluppando le sue prime foto a soli 13 anni. Tra il 1975 e il 1979 ha frequentato la Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), dove si appassiona alle opere di Man Ray, Duane Michals e Arthur Fellig Weegee. In questo periodo torna in Italia, a Roma, per frequentare i corsi europei della RISD con l’amica e collega Sloan Rankin. Qui si appassiona alle opere di Max Klinger e conosce, tra gli altri, anche Sabina Mirri, Edith Schloss, Giuseppe Gallo, Enrico Luzzi e Suzanne Santoro. Frequenta anche l’ambiente artistico della Transavanguardia Italiana. Nel gennaio del 1981 ha pubblicato la sua prima (e unica, da viva) collezione di fotografie, dal titolo Some Disordered Interior Geometries (Alcune disordinate geometrie interiori). Nel corso dello stesso mese si suicidò gettandosi da un palazzo di New York all’età di 22 anni. Le sue fotografie vengono esposte frequentemente in tutto il mondo anche oggi.

English

Francesca 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 young women who are nude, blurred (due to movement and long exposure times), merging with their surroundings, or whose faces are obscured. Her work continues to be the subject of much critical acclaim and attention, years after she killed herself at the age of 22, in 1981.
Woodman was born to artists George Woodman and Betty Woodman (Abrahams). Her mother is Jewish and her father is from a Protestant background. Her older brother, Charles, later became an associate professor of electronic art.
Woodman 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 whilst 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 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 died by suicide, jumping out of a loft window of a building on the East Side of New York. 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.
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 (6×6 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 and represented by Victoria Miro, London and Marian Goodman, New York, consists of over 800 prints, of which only around 120 images had been published or exhibited as of 2006.[4](p. 6) 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”.
Many of Woodman’s images are untitled and are known only by a location and date. The table below contains information on some of Woodman’s most famous photographs. For each photograph, the location, the date, the title and a brief description are given (since multiple images may share the same location, date, and title, and a single image may be assigned multiple locations, dates and titles). The columns on the right contain links to up to four reproductions of the photograph found on the Web, and page numbers of reproductions in five major books.
Woodman had only a few exhibitions during her life, some of which have been described as “exhibitions in alternative spaces in New York and Rome.” There were no known group or solo exhibitions of her work between 1981 and 1985, but numerous exhibitions each year since then.