AUDIO
SPACES EMBODIED
Audio 5/10
5.
Francesca Woodman
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AUDIO
Francesca Woodman
The American artist Francesca Woodman is known for her black-and-white photographs in small format. We were able to obtain eight of these photos on loan. They show a young woman interacting with run-down spaces in an unconventional way. She touches the spaces or seems to be literally crawling into the wall. In most of the pictures it is the artist herself who is seeking this odd melding with the space. In the process, she uses props like wallpaper, animal fur, or fabric—all elements that remind us of skins or shrouds.
One picture is especially exciting, in my view, because it picks up “traces in space” as a theme. This ties into the pieces by Heidi Bucher and Do Ho Suh. In this photograph, Woodman uses white powder to stage an imprint of her body on the floor. If you look closely, you will see that she prominently placed her body imprint at the center of the image. The photo you see here is the result of an artistic action, in which the artist lay down on the floor and allowed someone to dust her, and the floor around her, with white powder. After she stood up again, the imprint remained. In my mind, this imprint seen in the photograph testifies to the artist’s simultaneous presence and absence in the room. There are also footprints of bare feet inside the imprint left by Woodman’s body. Can you see them? They move away from the silhouette of the artist, who herself is wearing black shoes. Here, we encounter a mysterious overlapping of traces.
I am fascinated by Woodman’s way of engaging with the space. It has a sensory, almost erotic touch. Yet her photographs elude any clear interpretation. They are so full of details and secretive clues. It seems to me that Woodman’s testimony can be better felt than expressed in words. Her pictures impart to us a feeling of intense connection with one’s own spatial environment. Woodman places photographic realism and staged moments into exciting relation. The medium of photography’s supposed promise to depict the world objectively is used by the artist in a clever way—to express subjective feelings in visual form.
One picture is especially exciting, in my view, because it picks up “traces in space” as a theme. This ties into the pieces by Heidi Bucher and Do Ho Suh. In this photograph, Woodman uses white powder to stage an imprint of her body on the floor. If you look closely, you will see that she prominently placed her body imprint at the center of the image. The photo you see here is the result of an artistic action, in which the artist lay down on the floor and allowed someone to dust her, and the floor around her, with white powder. After she stood up again, the imprint remained. In my mind, this imprint seen in the photograph testifies to the artist’s simultaneous presence and absence in the room. There are also footprints of bare feet inside the imprint left by Woodman’s body. Can you see them? They move away from the silhouette of the artist, who herself is wearing black shoes. Here, we encounter a mysterious overlapping of traces.
I am fascinated by Woodman’s way of engaging with the space. It has a sensory, almost erotic touch. Yet her photographs elude any clear interpretation. They are so full of details and secretive clues. It seems to me that Woodman’s testimony can be better felt than expressed in words. Her pictures impart to us a feeling of intense connection with one’s own spatial environment. Woodman places photographic realism and staged moments into exciting relation. The medium of photography’s supposed promise to depict the world objectively is used by the artist in a clever way—to express subjective feelings in visual form.