"It is difficult not to read Woodman's many self-portraits - she produced over five hundred during her short lifetime - as alluding to a troubled state of mind. She committed suicide at the age of twenty-two".
The first place I looked to find some of Woodman's images was at the Tate: here I found 18 images showing some of the self-portraits described in the statement above. My initial reaction was that I agree, they are compulsive: I was drawn by the surrealism initially. As I looked closer, I saw a portrayal of tension between vulnerability and a desire to self-expose. As if Woodman wanted to be seen (or heard), yet was uncomfortable doing so. We mostly see sections of her body in strange situations, for example, naked from the waist down, or curled around a bowl containing an eel. We hardly ever see her face, and therefore, hardly see her soul? I tried to look without reading the captions as I wanted to see what I could draw from these image without being prompted. I felt that it's as if Woodman wants us to see her, but only controlled parts of her, not her entire being.
Interesting that her images are all square format, which to me means that they are deliberate and to the point. She is not giving us the context of a rectangle with more detail about the environment - we are permitted to see just a brief and neatly framed section of the scene. There is no additional or superfluous information. I also like the pseudo "Polaroid" format with hand-written annotation - did she mean these to represent snap shots? Brief glimpses of her life? Is this consistent with my earlier thought about the desire to show the self, but only a tiny bit? Only the bits she wants us to see? What is she hiding?
I found another site showing more of Woodman's work at Victoria Miro (gallery). The first image shown on this webpage (untitled) shows Woodman's hands and wrists wrapped in birch bark. My first reaction was that the texture and shape of the bark around her arms creates the appearance of self-harming scars. Would I have thought that had I not read the above statement and just seen the image with no context?
The third place I looked was at the Guardian. Annoyingly, I found out that there had been an exhibition at Victoria Miro in the autumn last year. I would have liked to have seen that. Note to self....pay more attention to The Guardian! The article recounts conversations with Woodman's friends and family, and so provides greater context around her photography. The biggest surprise in this article, is that her mother Betty states that Woodman's work is funny. It's about angles (I can see that), hence the name of the exhibition "Zigzag", but also humour; the birch tree bark image, is about recreating finger-less gloves. This then begs the question, how much of our conclusions and interpretations are primed by a biased viewpoint of somebody else? Or is a mother (understandably) trying to cover up and protect a daughter's vulnerability and darkness?
In the article, Cooke quotes Woodman's friend Betsy Berne:
"In the past, Woodman’s suicide – she jumped off a building in lower Manhattan – has been linked to a funding application that had been turned down. Berne disputes this. “She had an illness: depression. That’s all there is to it.” "
This is a first-hand account that Woodman was troubled; as Bright says, she had a troubled state of mind. I think this is clear from her photographs. Why does she hide beneath a door? Why does she kneel naked in a pool of paint? Why does she appear to seduce a giant fossil?
The answers to these questions are of course unclear, and sadly, as Woodman is no longer alive, they can never be answered with certainty. It's clear she suffered mental anguish, from both the photographs and her suicide, but I wonder if her mother is also right - are the photographs meant to be comical? Is this Woodman's way of coping with depression - to create comedy?
Anecdotally, many of our brilliant comedians also suffer from depression, for example, John Cleese and Stephen Fry. Are depression and humour inextricably linked?
References:
- Bright, S. (2010) Auto Focus: The Self-Portrait in Contemporary Photography, London: Thames & Hudson, in OCA Context and Narrative Course Materials (2014)
- Francesca Woodman available from http://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/7-francesca-woodman/ [accessed 1 February 2015]
- Francesca Woodman 1958-1981 available from http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/francesca-woodman-10512 [accessed 1 February 2015]
- Searching for the real Francesca Woodman article by Rachel Cooke in The Guardian (2014) available from http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/31/searching-for-the-real-francesca-woodman [accessed 1 February 2015]
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