Francesca Woodman’s Photography: Death and the Image One More Time

Abstract

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Multiple Expeausures: Identity and Alterity in the ‘Self-Portraits’ of Francesca Woodman

“…As Peggy Phelan has noted: 'hands haunt her frames; her work hungers for tactility'. 16 This is perhaps why fabrics -dresses, scarves, furs, sheets, as well as bodily coverings of a less conventional kind such as wallpaper, bark, dirt and paint -feature so prominently in her images. The settings, too, are incredibly sensuous, filled with crumbling walls, dusty floorboards, grass, earth.…”

Do We Find or Lose Ourselves in the Negative?

“…One critic suggests Woodman's images are her own fort/da game 5 -an attempt to master her own state of nonbeing (my word): the casting out and reeling in of images that both grasp selfimage and offer access to an image of her own imagelessness (Phelan, 2002) (Figure 3). …”

“…Woodman inhabits another space. She herself writes that the task of her photographs (Phelan, 2002) was to allow her to locate "where I fit in this odd geometry of time." 6 Hmm.…”

Metamorphosis and the aesthetics of loss: II. Lady of the woods–The transformative lens of Francesca Woodman

“…Krauss, 1986). Other approaches are thoroughly grounded in the manner of her death; for example, drawing on Barthes’s critique of photography, Phelan (2002) asserts that:…”

“…Krauss, 1986). Other approaches are thoroughly grounded in the manner of her death; for example, drawing on Barthes's critique of photography, Phelan (2002) asserts that: [Woodman's] self-portraits might be understood as rehearsals for the photographer's own death, because they allow the photographer to pose an image of her own still life, to develop an image of herself as dead … Woodman enters the medium of photography as its most supple ghost. (pp.…”