I subscribe to the weekend New York Times to keep up with the arts. I am often thrilled with the articles therein and this weekend was no exception as I read the article about Francesca Woodman, whom I'd never heard of before. Turns out she is now one of my favorite photographers.
I won't go into details about her tragic suicide. The article discusses her parents' role in fostering her career as an artist-photographer after her death. What intrigued me about her was the profound visual metaphors her work displays. She is constantly looking at herself or the idea of the self and often is hidden, distorted or vanishing in the picture frame. This intrigues me as so many of the teen age students I teach have these mixed feelings about who they are and what they look like and how they might interpret that.
I found this wikipedia article about Woodman and thought it was also very helpful and had links to many of her images. Here are just a few of the images I found amazing.
