While Francesca Woodman’s career may have been short lived, her work has become increasingly more popular since her death. At age 22, Woodman committed suicide. This has cast a darker shadow over her photographs and its difficult to view her work without relating it back to her mental illness.

Woodman’s images are mostly self-portraits. George Woodman, her father, told The Guardian, “She was concentrating on the picture. That was why she didn’t want people around. She didn’t want any distractions.” Woodman produced over 800 images, focusing on a surrealist approach and using long exposure to create a burred image that merges the subject with its background.

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Image analysis:

Context/Concept:

Like most of Woodman’s images, this one plays on the idea of identity and a freedom from gravity. However, taken the year previous to her first suicide attempt, this image may also look at Woodman’s possible consideration of hanging as a means of taking one’s own life.

Visual:

This image shows Woodman dangling from a door frame. She wears only a shirt. In front of her is a chair. Woodman herself could be considered almost Christ-like as her pose is close to that forced upon Jesus during his crucifixion. Similar to her other works, the levitation suggests a further exploration of Woodman’s need for weightlessness. This need may have stemmed from Woodman’s metal illness and desire to escape her negative feelings.

The placement of the chair in the image suggests a further darker tone. A common form of suicide is by handing. When one hangs themselves they often kick a chair from under themselves. While the chair is this image has clearly not been kicked over, it does suggest that Woodman may have been considering the idea.

However, since this image was taken in 1978, two years before Woodman’s first and unsuccessful suicide attempt, it is unlikely that the image relates to suicide at all.