Francesca WoodmanUntitled 1975-80

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… (read more)