Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman created her first photograph at thirteen and took her own life at age 22. She left behind a hauntingly beautiful legacy. Flailing, groveling, jumping, and hiding--often dissolving into a blur before the camera--she used her body as an actor in a mysterious drama. In less than a decade Woodman created a body of work that has secured her position as one of the most original American artists of the 1970s, and the first-ever child prodigy of photography.

FRANCESCA WOODMAN by Chris Townsend, is the most comprehensive book on the legendary artist ever published, as well as the only monograph in print. Woodman has become one of the most talked about, studied and influential photographers of the late twentieth century. She brought an understanding of Baroque painting, Modernist art and contemporary post-minimalist practice to her evocative, sensual self-portraits. This survey features 250 images--many of which have never been exhibited or published before--as well as unpublished extracts from her journals selected by her father George Woodman to provide a glimpse into her private world. New research by art historian, Chris Townsend, examines the influences of gothic literature, surrealism, feminism and post-minimalist art on Woodman's photographs.

Woodman played complex games of hide-and-seek with her camera. Constructing enigmas that trap our gaze, her work conjures the precarious moment between adolescence and adulthood, between presence and absence. She depicts herself seemingly fading into a flat plane, merging with the wall under the peeling wallpaper, dissolving into the floor, or flattening herself behind shards of glass. Fascinated by transformation and the permeability of seemingly fixed boundaries, Woodman constantly compares the fragility of her own body with the physical environment around her. Her images read as a diary--sharing both her imagination and her body.

Art critic Arthur Danto said of Woodman's photographs, "It is impossible to view her work without being drawn into the vast questions it raises about life, art and the meaning and embodiment of sex. . . . Her work unfolds over time like the oeuvre of a brilliant and precocious poet, like Keats or Rimbaud, whose voice is present in every line."

The release of personal records by the Woodman family along with personal memories of the artist by Betsy Berne, one of her closest friends, adds a powerful dimension to this extraordinary monograph. FRANCESCA WOODMAN provides a fascinating window into the world of this exceptional talent.

Phaidon would like to thank Betty and George Woodman, her parents, for their help and close involvement at all stages of this publication.