Gagosian Announces Representation of Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman 1958-1981, United States Follow +

Gagosian has announced its representation of short-lived American photographer Francesca Woodman in partnership with the Woodman Family Foundation.

The gallery will present some of her body of over 800 prints during Art Basel this week.

Woodman’s photographs largely consist of black and white self-portraits, often nude or semi-nude, shot in entropic interiors.

Woodman often posed herself in relation to mirrors, vitrines, and crumbling household fixtures, suggesting a Victorian or gothic aesthetic. The imagery plays with themes of paradox and metamorphosis, and the symbolism of the nude in mythology, literature, and allegory.

‘I like watching the immediacy of a photograph struggle with ‘timeless imagery’ the way it does in say a pictorialist photograph,’ Woodman said in 1979.

Woodman also altered nineteenth- and twentieth-century journals to create artist books. This month MACK London will publish a collection of her artist’s books including two never before seen books.

Woodman was born into an artistic family in 1958. Her father was painter and photographer George Woodman and her mother was the ceramic artist Betty Woodman. Studying in Italy and at the Rhode Island School of Design developed her artistic interests, particularly in the surrealists and their subversions.

Woodman only lived to 22 before taking her own life, ostensibly due to her frustrated artistic ambitions and a broken relationship.

In her last year Woodman began to experiment with sepia diazotypes used in blueprints.

Francesca Woodman’s photographs are set to be shown alongside the work of British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, over a century her senior, at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 21 March to 30 June 2024.

Gagosian will hold a solo exhibition dedicated to her work in New York in 2024. —[O]

Main image: Francesca Woodman, From Polka Dots, Providence, Rhode Island (1976). Vintage gelatin silver print mounted on mat board. 5 1/4 x 5 1/4 inches (13.3 x 13.3 cm). Mat board: 14 x 10 1/2 inches (35.6 x 26.7 cm). © Woodman Family Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy Woodman Family Foundation and Gagosian.