Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman was an American photographer whose photographs explored issues of gender and self, looking at the representation of the body and its relationships it is in. She often put herself partially hidden in the image or concealed by slow exposures that blue her moving figure to give it a ghostly effect.

I admire her self-portraiture work and how she works with long exposures in her homemade studio, and with the way that Woodman combines self-portraiture, performance and play in her work, the photographs have the ability to reflect extreme and disturbing psychological feelings to the viewer.

The photograph ‘Space2, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975 - 1978’ was part of one of Woodman’s series, titled ‘Space2’. She used a prolonged exposure to create a ethereal quality that distorts her into a ghostly blur, much like the whole series experimented in concealing her from the viewer. In this project she also captured herself in the nude trapped moving inside a box, giving the idea that she may be in a museum display box for men to look at as women were seen as objects around the 1970s and were pushing for equality.

Having a slow shutter speed allows Woodman to capture her movement in the images, showing her interaction with her surroundings. This allows the audience of the pictures to see her relationship with the room she is in to further create the atmosphere she wants to achieve. Woodman uses her body a lot in her images, and by capturing her movement in this series of pictures I think she is appearing confused or somewhat overwhelmed. 

My personal opinion of Woodman’s work is that her use of location and shutter speeds is highly effective in creating an atmosphere for the viewer, although they are darker emotions than positive ones.