Francesca Woodman profiled in Vogue

What We See Now When We Look at Francesca Woodman’s Photographs. By Rebecca Bengal.

It has now been 35 years since the death of Francesca Woodman, but interest in her and in the photographs she left behind—a radical, extraordinary, but abbreviated body of work that at first glance was all about the body—has never waned. In fact, every year or so, another strong wave hits, in the form of a new book, a new exhibit, a film, or another prominent admirer, as subsequent generations and audiences discover anew her mostly black-and-white, alluringly obscured images. Small and intimate and startling, they draw you close. Sometimes the pictures are of girl models who resembled her, nude or clothed; sometimes Woodman poses with a male model—a corpulent older man identified as Charlie; but usually, the image is of the photographer herself, alone with her camera, shutter left open to record her deliberately long exposure, plotting out her beautiful, spooky blurs, zigzagging in and out of the frame, disappearing into the tombstones and fireplaces and wallpaper and corners of abandoned-looking rooms, and presumably out of the world forever, as Woodman did, killing herself at age 22...

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