Female Adolescence, Isolation and Hauntings in the Work of Francesca Woodman
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Though her career lasted less than ten years, when Francesca Woodman passed away in 1981, she left behind an oeuvre of over 800 prints and 10,000 negatives. Most were taken while she was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, which she attended from 1975 to 1979. At the cusp of adolescence, Woodman created her first mature work, Self-portrait at 13 (1972), the pall of which pervades her succeeding photos. Her work captures vulnerability, isolation, and uncertainty; the construction and fragmentation of identity during the transition from girlhood to womanhood.
The blurring of her body in works like Space2, Providence, Rhode Island (1976) in which no definitive features can be identified, gestures to the ambiguity of girlhood. It’s a period during which girls are at the threshold of adulthood yet are still viewed and treated as children. During this stage, girls are sometimes referred to as an enigma by those around them: That is, they are difficult to explain or understand.
There’s an uncertainty in who they are or what is happening to them partly because they themselves don’t yet know. In House, #3, Providence, Rhode Island (1975-1976) and Polka Dots (1976), Woodman employs her blurred body to further foreground the representation of the precariousness of her teenage self. Utilising her preferred method of long-shutter speeds, the resulting shots are an unfocused finished product, the images also symbolise motion - the idea that girlhood is constantly in flux.
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According to Psychology Today, a crucial aspect of adolescence is identity formation, during which adolescents will “try on” varying behaviours and appearances to help create a sense of self. Through these moments of experimentation, pieces of who you once were are replaced and new facets of self are shaped by memories, experiences, and relationships. In photos like Untitled (from Swan Song Series) (1978), Woodman positions her head just out of the frame, playing with composition to allude to the fragmentation of self that occurs during girlhood.
The experience of adolescence can often feel as if you’re alone: As if you are the only person who has ever felt the way you do. In Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel The Virgin Suicides, after her failed suicide attempt, Cecilia, the youngest Lisbon sister is told she’s not young enough to know how bad life gets, to which she responds, “Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.” There’s a gendered misconception that during girlhood nothing of importance is experienced and that thoughts have no value, which can result in feelings of isolation that Woodman superbly depicts in photos like Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island (1976). The camera captures Woodman from the waist down, nude except for a black Mary Janes. On the wooden floor in front of her is a black mark in the shape of a woman’s body. Her body language, arms hanging between her legs, and legs slightly turned from the camera suggest that the form on the ground is haunting both Woodman and her images.
There’s a veneer of melancholia that covers her images. In them, she invites viewers to bear witness to the journey she’s undertaking from girlhood to womanhood. Her photos often feature her own nude body and through the use of long shutter speed and double exposure, result in a blurred figure. Isolation in girlhood is also tied to vulnerability. Femininity and femaleness or the very existence of girlhood are associated with vulnerability and a believed inherent weakness. The framing of the images, sometimes cutting her in half, others completely obscuring her, gesture to this seclusion.
“In her images, Woodman invites viewers to bear witness to the journey she’s undertaking from girlhood to womanhood.”
There’s a sense that through her work, Woodman is questioning who she is. With each image, there’s a feeling of uncertainty, especially in those where her face isn’t visible. The positions that Woodman contorts her body into in photos like Horizontale (1976) and Untitled (1976) are not only reminiscent of the different behaviours and appearances that are tested in the search for the self but also gesture to how in girlhood, we are expected to conform to a societal idea of what girls are meant to be.
Woodman’s work has been described as haunting, pointedly relating to her death. But that is sometimes a negligent reading and descriptor of her work. The argument can be made that her work feels haunted because the shadows are symbolic of the former selves she’s shed as she builds a sense of self. The images are evocative of scenes in Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled that are filled with darkness, motioning to Gothic sensibilities that centre derelict architecture as a reminder of a previously thriving world. The darkness puts forth the question of what is being hidden. With Woodman’s composition, it feels like these former selves are lurking just outside the frame, behind a wall or door. If Woodman’s work is documenting the emotional, physical, and psychological journey from girlhood to womanhood, then these “ghost” like images loiter on the sites of her images lamenting all she lost during this transition.
Even 42 years after her death, it is still rare for Woodman, the artist and woman, to be separated from her untimely death. There is, as is often the case with young, talented individuals who commit suicide, a need to romanticise their death and reduce their lives to that, albeit eternal, moment. With regards to Woodman, it is easy to understand why she and her work are idealised in that way. Yet, to only examine her work through the lens of her death is to neglect and discredit how her work addresses the intricacies of girlhood. Through her images, Woodman captures the vulnerability and isolation that come with trying to form a sense of self during a period that is not only overwhelming but perceived as inconsequential.
Words: Karla Mendez