| Notes: | Published on the occasion of the exhibition held at MCA Denver, September 20, 2019-April 5, 2020.
Includes bibliographical references (page 172).
"Francesca Woodman: Portrait of a Reputation" : September 20, 2019-April 5, 2020, the MCA Denver, Denver, Colorado, United States.
Text in English.
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| Summary: | "Francesca Woodman took her first photograph at the age of thirteen. From the time she was a teenager until her death at twenty-two, she produced a fascinating body of work exploring gender, representation, and the very nature of the photograph itself using her own body and those of her friends. Featuring approximately forty unique vintage prints, as well as notes, letters, postcards, and other ephemera from a pivotal moment in the artist's young career, this volume, accompanying an exhibition of the same name, details Woodman's creative and personal coming-of-age during the years 1975-79. George Lange, a close friend of Woodman's and her family's--and a photographer in his own right--introduced curator Nora Burnett Abrams to the cache of images and ephemera from his personal collection that are featured in the volume. Ranging from portraits in her studio/apartment in college to self-portraits in the bucolic Colorado landscape in which she was raised, these works, which have never been published before, capture Woodman's hallmark approach to art-making: enigmatic, rigorous, and poignant. In her essay about this extraordinary group of images and ephemera, Abrams argues that these phtotographs afford a rare opportunity to see an artist in formation--in them we witness the artist as she worked through an idea in many iterations to arrive at a desired result. Abrams also concludes that, importantly, this unique archive humanizes Woodman and allows the viewer to see her in the fullness of her life--laughing with friends and collaborators, being playful, and feeling joy. Drew Sawyer's essay considers the heady years of the mid-1970s and photography's increasingly important role in contemporary art discourse of the time, when serious approaches to the medium were just starting to take hold. Sawyer deftly catalogues the critical texts of the day that chronicled the move away from documentary or 'straight' photography in artistic circles emerging at the time, which privileged more personal and experimental image-making. He places Woodman in the context of her peers--such as Ana Mendieta--and the important feminist debates that were defining the era."
From the time she was a teenager until her death at twenty-two, Francesca Woodman produced a fascinating body of work exploring gender, representation, and the very nature of the photography itself using her own body and those of her friends. Featuring approximately forty unique vintage prints, as well as notes, letters, postcards, and other ephemera from a pivotal moment in the artist's young career, this volume details Woodman's creative and personal coming-of-age during the years 1975-1979. --
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