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>
Providence Rhode Island
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
actions: postures and motions
adults
architecture
arts and entertainment
chair
decay
domestic
emotions, concepts and ideas
features
female
fine arts and music
formal qualities
furnishings
interior - non-specific
interiors
named individuals
nudes
objects
people
photographer
photographic
portraits
self-portraits
shadowgraph
sitting
sunshine
universal concepts
weather
window
woman
Woodman, Francesca
work and occupations
<p>This black and white square-format photograph features the artist sitting in a chair in the corner of an abandoned interior space. The room has bare floorboards and a heavy skirting board. On the right of the composition, behind the artist, is a window through which light enters the scene, while on the left is what looks like a filled-in window surround. Woodman is seated on a white wooden chair and is nude except for a necklace and a pair of dark single-strap ‘Mary Jane’ style shoes. She wears her hair up, with a single lock falling on the right side of her face. Looking straight at the camera, she sits upright with her legs almost together and her feet tucked in close to the chair, while her hands are positioned in her lap just between her legs. Her bare breasts and torso are lighter in colour than the rest of her skin. On the a particularly white area of the floor to her right, forming a diagonal from where she sits, is a dark silhouette or impression of what looks like a female body, with its head at the artist’s feet. The outline is only partial, missing its forearms, hands and left leg.</p>
paper print photograph gelatin silver
14 March 2009 – 8 November 2009
2009-11-08
12 March 2009 – 8 November 2009
2009-11-08
2009-03-12
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Edinburgh, UK)
http://www.nationalgalleries.org/
2009-03-14
ARTIST ROOMS Francesca Woodman
Collection based display
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
Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island
image: 143 × 144 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>This black and white square-format photograph features the artist sitting in a chair in the corner of an abandoned interior space. The room has bare floorboards and a heavy skirting board. On the right of the composition, behind the artist, is a window through which light enters the scene, while on the left is what looks like a filled-in window surround. Woodman is seated on a white wooden chair and is nude except for a necklace and a pair of dark single-strap ‘Mary Jane’ style shoes. She wears her hair up, with a single lock falling on the right side of her face. Looking straight at the camera, she sits upright with her legs almost together and her feet tucked in close to the chair, while her hands are positioned in her lap just between her legs. Her bare breasts and torso are lighter in colour than the rest of her skin. On the a particularly white area of the floor to her right, forming a diagonal from where she sits, is a dark silhouette or impression of what looks like a female body, with its head at the artist’s feet. The outline is only partial, missing its forearms, hands and left leg.</p>
<p>The photograph, as the title suggests, was taken in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1976, and is one of a series of similar images. The powder on the floor is flour gathered from a freight car which happened to overturn in the vicinity of Woodman’s studio (Bronfen 2014). The artist lay on her back while the flour was sprinkled over her and the surrounding floorboards, leaving the dark impression or ‘shadow’ where she had been. The photograph contains glowing whites: the light coming in from the window behind Woodman has completely obliterated any detail of the outside world, and the flour on the floor appears to shimmer.</p>
<p>Woodman's photographs frequently depict female forms in empty, tightly cropped interior spaces. This corresponds with the small size of the photographs themselves, which rarely exceed twenty centimetres square, allowing for what the critic Jane Simon has described as ‘an intimate experience between the viewer and the photograph’ (Simon 2010, p.28). Establishing a close relationship between the viewer and the artwork allowed Woodman to convey a sense of fragility and vulnerability in relation to the external world, as suggested by the artist’s closed pose and anxious expression in this photograph. Although she was the model in most of her work, Woodman’s photographs do not function as typical self-portraits. Rather, she used her own image to explore the representation of gender and the relation of the body to its environment. Her use of objects associated with budding femininity, like the ‘Mary Jane’ shoes, set within a decaying interior space, a site often associated with female domesticity, challenges idealised, constructed notions of femininity.</p>
<p>The impression on the floor, which reveals the darker, rough floorboards below, creates the illusion of a body sinking through a surface, or perhaps floating through light. This supernatural imagery corresponds to the artist’s interest in the surrealist movement of the early twentieth century, and perhaps alludes to the American artist Man Ray’s signature Rayograms, which, in reverse of Woodman’s dark imprint, feature light bodies and objects on dark grounds. The feature may also refer directly to <i>Erotique Voilée </i>1933 (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid), Man Ray’s portrait of his fellow surrealist Méret Oppenheim at a printing press. In Ray’s photograph, Oppenheim’s arm is smeared with ink, which creates a dark imprint of her body similar to the imprint Woodman created for her photograph.</p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Carol Armstrong, ‘Francesca Woodman: A Ghost in the House of the Woman Artist’, in Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zegher (eds.), <i>Women Artists at the Millennium</i>, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2006, pp.337–69.<br/>Jane Simon, ‘An Intimate Mode of Looking: Francesca Woodman's Photographs’,<i> Emotion, Space and Society</i>, no.3, May 2010, pp.28–59.<br/>Meaghan Thurston, ‘‘At Home in Dust’: Francesca Woodman’s House Series, Revisited’, <i>Forum</i>, no.11, Autumn 2010, <a href="http://www.forumjournal.org/site/issue/11/meaghan-thurston">http://www.forumjournal.org/site/issue/11/meaghan-thurston</a>, accessed 8 October 2013.<br/>Elisabeth Bronfen, ‘Leaving an Imprint: Francesca Woodman’s Photographic Tableaux Vivants’,  in <i>Francesca Woodman: Works from the Sammlung Verbund</i>. Cologne and New York 2014.</p>
<p>Emilie Reed<br/>The University of Edinburgh<br/>October 2013</p>
<p>
<i>The University of Edinburgh is a research partner of ARTIST ROOMS.</i>
</p>
</div>

Summary
2021-01-28T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<p>Woodman perches naked on a chair, appearing defensive and vulnerable. This is one of the few self-portraits where we see the artist’s full face. The vague black body imprinted on the floor seems to walk through the ground, as if descending into a nether world, while the desolate setting creates a chilling atmosphere. This is one of a series of photographs displaying the influence of Surrealism in the way it explores the supernatural. Woodman usually puts herself in the frame, although these are not conventional self-portraits. Instead, she explores issues of gender, self and the representation of the body in relation to its surroundings. An 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
actions: postures and motions adults architecture arts and entertainment chair decay domestic emotions, concepts and ideas features female fine arts and music formal qualities furnishings interior - non-specific interiors named individuals nudes objects people photographer photographic portraits self-portraits shadowgraph sitting sunshine universal concepts weather window woman Woodman, Francesca work and occupations