WOODMAN FRANCESCA (1958 1981) Untitled

Sale 2248 - Lot 309

Price Realized: $ 15,600

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000

WOODMAN, FRANCESCA (1958-1981)
Untitled. Silver print, 5 inches (12.7 cm.) square, with Woodman's signature and date, in blue pencil, on verso. 1980

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Additional Details

The imagery of Francesca Woodman is seamlessly and inextricably linked to the daily events in her life. It is reflected in her modernist interpretation of romanticism and the surreal, along with her continuing commentary on personal identification. When Woodman's friend Sloan Rankin asked her why she was the topic of her own photographs with such frequency she replied, "It's a matter of convenience, I'm always available." Much of her unconventional imagery was produced through her interest in working with objects and props, which she collected and then used to emphasize the gestures, expressions and oddities of herself and others. However, here, not only is Woodman's powerful gaze relinquished, but the image is dominated by something other than the human subject, a large shadow that looms nearby, placing the subject in a position of vulnerability.

Woodman photographed her own body from the age of 13 until her suicide at age 22, and her surroundings varied as much as her portraiture did, from Colorado, to Providence, to Italy, and to New York. Throughout her travels she worked with various photographic techniques and explored a range of visual emotions, from a sense of playfulness that inhibited her work in the middle of her career, and the sense of loss and longing found within her early portraits, which in the end, became the most prominent. In one of her last letters before her death she wrote, "I do have standards and my life at this point is like very old coffeecup sediment and I would rather die young leaving various accomplishments…"