Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Francesca Woodman, Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976


Francesca Woodman is a Photographer who committed suicide at the age of 22. This photographs I posted here is a contact sheet in which she drew shapes on top of her moving body, perhaps to represent a portal of some sort? At least that is how I see it. I read a blog post on http://blog.sfmoma.org about her work and I really enjoyed what the writer said:

"Nearly all photos contain this illusory stillness, despite the unrest of the actual. But Woodman denies us this temporary serenity. In her refusal to stay still before the camera, she asserts the primacy of the transitional moment — the one when we are in motion, separated from the past but not yet integrated into the future. For although we want to believe our experience is structured into an itinerary of stable departure points and destinations, her version is closer to the truth: we spend much of our time in between."

I am often terrible at putting my thoughts about a photograph into actual words and this blogger put it perfectly. You can see her struggle and depression come out in many of her photographs, part of the reason why they are so strong. One of the reasons I love art and photography is that you can express emotions that words can't begin to explain.

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