FRANCESCA WOODMAN. The Body as Poetry, the Image as Presence
What does it mean to inscribe oneself into space – into the world – with such intensity, as if one knew that time were limited? This cinematic tour through the Francesca Woodman exhibition invites viewers to discover the work of this extraordinary artist through a profound dialogue between Ralph Gleis, Director of the Albertina, and Gabriele Schor, founder and curator of the Sammlung Verbund.
Francesca Woodman’s photographs are more than just images – they are poetic gestures, enigmatic stagings of presence and disappearance. At just thirteen, she already understood herself as an artist – not in the romanticized sense of a child prodigy, but through an uncompromising devotion to the language of images. Using her own body as both medium and subject, she explored space not as geometry but as an emotional and psychological field. Her compositions – often fleeting, fragmented, and rich in metaphor – challenge conventions of self-image and gender roles.
Through Schor’s perceptive commentary, the film reveals how Woodman developed a unique, tactile visual language using long exposures, abandoned spaces, and everyday objects – gloves, mirrors, wallpaper – and how intricately she constructed her images. Her work is deeply shaped by a female perspective and at the same time imbued with literary resonance, inspired by Surrealism and Renaissance iconography. She did not merely take photographs – she thought in metaphors, in what she called “linguistic pirouettes.”
The exhibition does not dwell on the tragic end of her life, but rather – as Schor puts it – considers her work from its beginning, in terms of its artistic development. It highlights her treatment of space, of the body, of surrealist and art historical influences, as well as those drawn from contemporary fashion photography.
For all those interested in photography, feminist perspectives, and the relationship between image and identity, this film offers more than an introduction to the work of Francesca Woodman – it is an invitation to linger in images of extraordinary compositional beauty and sensitivity, and to witness how such a young body of work can leave a lasting imprint.
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