Francesca Woodman

Olympus E5 and Leica 25mm Summilux at ISO 640 f2.0 1/60 of a second

If you haven't heard of Francesca Woodman don't worry about it, you're just making me feel better about that rock I've been living under.  After seeing some of her images featured in an art magazine while on holiday in Seattle, I put a book on my Amazon wish list featured her images and published by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

As a young photographer and one of the first students that graduated with an art degree in photography in the USA Francesca created a series of utterly impossible to explain yet captivating images of (usually) the female body.  While at the same time morbid, the images are beautiful and force you to consider the story involved.  If all great art creates emotion in the viewer, then this is surely among the best in the photography art world.

Woodman committed suicide at the age of 22 and 5 years later was featured in her first gallery show.  The images she left us are ghostly and often feature urban decay and narrative self portraits of the female form.  If you have a chance to see her work in a show do it.  I know it's on my list.  For now, I'm happy to own this book of her work and wonder about this amazing artist that ended her life so young.

You can find a link to the book, as usual, on the top right of the blog.

Thanks for dropping in.