Francesca Woodman

photographer

April 3 1958 - January 1981

A journey through 9 images

I am going to place myself before these 9 images, one by one.  I know I will feel my own urges, inclinations and associations, but I am going to try to place myself before them empty, let the image speak, perhaps Francesca will speak in me, perhaps a universal message is written here in invisible ink, perhaps it will appear though my investigation.    As the image is absorbed into my consciousness, I will become aware of the words appearing by my side arriving instantaneously like shooting stars, offered to me, each one exquisitely precise.  Then I will decide on one word or short phrase to refer to the 'essence' of each picture.

Photograph 1:  House #

The house is stripped of inhabitants, of furnishing, of home, of its life. The chimney is bricked up.  The house is emptied, sparsely adorned by detritus, the meaningless leftovers and products of its erosion and wearing away falling into fragments loosely placed before our eyes.

The female figure is not central to the composition despite the fact that we can make her out roughly in the centre of the picture, awkwardly flattened against the wall, sometimes blending with the peeling walls  and sometimes distinct from it, neither above nor below the window.  Her image is highlighted and blurred in the diffused dazzle of strong white window-light, her torso winged and veiled by the slow movement of long exposure, she is not taking up three dimensional space other than an anchoring of one leg and a foot whose shadow belongs to the floor.  The style of the stocking and shoe are reminiscent of the 1920s or 30s, a time when a move towards emancipation of women seemed at last possible.  Her face shows itself, fully intense but not entirely distinct, not quite sullen, not quite reproachful, the look of an early photograph, where the only important thing was to hold still and not to smile, now faded, like a glimpse of a moment of a life trapped in time, a life no longer, a feeling old and bygone, a haunting, a ghost, a woman's form struggling to 'be' in the worn-away house.

Ghost in the detritus