Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
ARTIST ROOMS
National Heritage Memorial Fund
Art Fund
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/francesca-woodman-10512" aria-label="More by Francesca Woodman" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Francesca Woodman</a>
Concord New Hampshire
ARTIST ROOMS
Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
adults
domestic
emotions, concepts and ideas
formal qualities
interior - non-specific
interiors
natural phenomena
objects
people
photograph
photographic
reading, writing, printed matter
shadow
sunshine
weather
woman
<p>Francesca Woodman sits along the right edge of this black and white photograph. Her body is angled towards the camera and largely blocks the window visible behind her. Her face is in shadow. She wears dark, heavy-looking clothing and her hands are placed in her lap, where they stand out amongst the black. Her hands are further illuminated by a slant of light that directs the eye to the left, where an array of framed photographic portraits – mostly of children – are arranged on a small table. The space is otherwise bare except for what looks like a painting or other piece of art hung on the wall in the upper left corner of the image. Written in dark ink below the bottom right corner of the photograph, on the off-white border, is a squiggle that resembles the number 5.</p>
paper print photograph gelatin silver
11 June 2011 – 23 October 2011
2011-10-23
11 June 2011 – 23 October 2011
2011-10-23
2011-06-11
Ferens Art Gallery (Hull, UK)
http://www.hullcc.gov.uk/museumcollections
2011-06-11
ARTIST ROOMS 2011: Francesca Woodman
Loan-out
5 April 2014 – 13 July 2014
2014-07-13
5 April 2014 – 13 July 2014
2014-07-13
2014-04-05
Bodelwyddan Castle (Bodelwyddan, UK)
2014-04-05
ARTIST ROOMS 2014: Francesca Woodman
Loan-out
15 November 2014 – 25 February 2015
2015-02-25
15 November 2014 – 25 February 2015
2015-02-25
2014-11-15
Oriel Davies Gallery (Newtown, UK)
2014-11-15
ARTIST ROOMS 2014: Francesca Woodman
Loan-out
18 February 2016 – 12 June 2016
2016-06-12
18 February 2016 – 12 June 2016
2016-06-12
2016-02-18
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2016-02-18
Performing for the Camera
Exhibition
Untitled, Concord, New Hampshire
image: 135 × 133 mm
frame: 458 × 402 × 20 mm
<a href="/search?gid=999999788" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">ARTIST ROOMS</a>
Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the <a href="/search?gid=999999967" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">National Heritage Memorial Fund</a> and the <a href="/search?gid=999999968" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Art Fund</a> 2008
<div class="text">
<p>Francesca Woodman sits along the right edge of this black and white photograph. Her body is angled towards the camera and largely blocks the window visible behind her. Her face is in shadow. She wears dark, heavy-looking clothing and her hands are placed in her lap, where they stand out amongst the black. Her hands are further illuminated by a slant of light that directs the eye to the left, where an array of framed photographic portraits – mostly of children – are arranged on a small table. The space is otherwise bare except for what looks like a painting or other piece of art hung on the wall in the upper left corner of the image. Written in dark ink below the bottom right corner of the photograph, on the off-white border, is a squiggle that resembles the number 5.</p>
<p>This photograph was created while Woodman was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence from 1975 to 1978. At RISD Woodman was a fiercely dedicated and independent student who devoted herself exhaustively to her work. She set up a studio and living space in the shabby rooms of a former dry goods store, and frequently worked in nearby abandoned houses and other rundown spaces. This work features Woodman prominently as its subject. When asked by her roommate and close friend Sloan Rankin why she was so often the subject of her own photographs, Woodman replied: ‘It’s a matter of convenience, I’m always available’ (quoted in Rankin 1998, p.35). This photograph is also notably small-scale. Woodman’s square photographs rarely measure more than fifteen centimetres in height or width.</p>
<p>Woodman made this photograph shortly after her grandmother’s funeral, which may identify her dark clothing as mourning dress. Art historian Peggy Phelan has argued that Woodman’s photographs were rehearsals for her ultimate suicide in 1981 at age twenty-two and that ‘her preoccupation with [death] permeates her understanding of photography’ (Phelan 2002, p.988). Phelan criticised much preceding scholarly work on Woodman for shying away from the artist’s suicide and pointed to ways in which Woodman ‘traces her own disappearance’ through her photographs (Phelan 2002, p.999). In this photograph Woodman can certainly be said to obscure herself in an act of disappearance. She is effaced by the darkness, her facial features blending into the black of her clothing. That her hands are illuminated might be taken to signify her role as photographer – the ‘artist’s hand’ made visible. However, her hands are rather still and cold-looking. Phelan has written that hands ‘haunt [Woodman’s] frames’ and that in many of her photographs ‘hands function as faces, intimately revealing portraits of affective states’ (Phelan 2002, p.992). In this sense the eerie, almost disconnected hands in this photograph may stand in for Woodman’s obscured face, conveying similar information about the sitter’s psychological and emotional state. The group of portrait photographs also illuminated by the light might suggest the power of images to preserve a person’s state in time, or else the capacity of images to outlive their subject.</p>
<p>Although she was about twenty years old at the time this photograph was taken, Woodman has the air of someone much older. Indeed, the light lends much of her visible hair a greying quality, and her clothing is quite matronly. Betsy Berne, a close friend of Woodman’s at RISD, has discussed this ambiguity: ‘[t]he contorted blurred figures in [Woodman’s] pictures capture a bleak wisdom beyond their years like that of a weary old woman who has seen too much and, simultaneously, the sweet naïveté of a pre-adolescent’ (quoted in Marian Goodman Gallery 2004, p.5). In this photograph Woodman appears as the former, perhaps in the guise of her late grandmother.</p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Sloan Rankin, ‘Peach Mumble – Ideas Cooking’ in Hervé Chandès (ed.), <i>Francesca Woodman</i>, New York 1998.<br/>Peggy Phelan, ‘Francesca Woodman’s Photography: Death and the Image One More Time’, <i>Signs</i>, vol.27, no.4, Summer 2002, pp.979–1004.<br/>
<i>Francesca Woodman: Photographs 1975–1980</i>, exhibition catalogue, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York 2004.</p>
<p>John White<br/>University of Edinburgh<br/>February 2015</p>
<p>
<i>The University of Edinburgh is a research partner of ARTIST ROOMS.</i>
</p>
</div>

Summary
2017-01-27T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<p>Woodman took this photograph of herself not long after her grandmother’s funeral. Old family photographs sit on the table beside her, whilst she is bathed in a transparent light suggesting a spiritual presence. Woodman has openly acknowledged the influence of Duane Michals’s surreal photographs for such images, which explore movement and transparency. Her photographs explore issues of gender and self, looking at the representation of the body in relation to its surroundings. She usually puts herself in the frame, although these are not conventional self-portraits, since she is either partially hidden or concealed by slow exposures that blur her moving figure into a ghostly presence. This underlying fragility is emphasised by the small and intimate format of the photographs.</p>

Online caption
2009-04-16T00:00:00
online-caption
ONLINE_CAPTION
adults domestic emotions, concepts and ideas formal qualities interior - non-specific interiors natural phenomena objects people photograph photographic reading, writing, printed matter shadow sunshine weather woman