Francesca Woodman

In April 2012, during a short vacation in New York, we visited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) an exhibition of the work of the American photographer Francesca Woodman (1958-1981).

I was immediately intrigued big time. Rarely I have seen such a direct, personal and moving photography. She has possibly been the first photographer ever to use photography so explicitly to bring something that lives inside really to expression and by doing that establishing a dialogue through photography with herself, to experiment with and explore herself – as human being and as woman.

On almost all of her pictures she herself and only herself as the subject - almost in every instance naked, in a simple composition, and in a very magical-expressionistic style – largely taken against the décor of an abandoned, empty house, vulnerable and alone, as in retreat. Images that were not understood and received well at the academy of art were she studied and which to a large extent haven’t been printed ever during her life (that came to an end far too early as a result of suicide). Although on one end she was striving for recognition (and hence publication) – and hence for expression to and communication with an audience – her images also show a desire for being alone and an atmosphere of loneliness and struggle with herself.

I felt myself enormously inspired by what I saw. Not necessarily by the form and theme she chose, and her personal process, but by the idea behind it and how convincing that was elaborated: photography as a means of self-expression and object-isation (bringing to the outside in a material form) of something that lives inside that can hardly be captured (yet) in words, but even better in images – in order to learn from it. It inspired to experiment likewise (first the following summer in the Corrèze, see image above, later on around the end of the year at our attic) and make a few series with myself as subject, of which a few can be seen on my website.

I had to think of this when I was made aware of a play by Toneelgroep Maastricht, “How to play Francesca Woodman”. The play by four young actresses, which text has been written by Anne Vegter (Poet of the Nation) and Erik-Ward Geerlings (amongst others Decamerone, Mephisto), wil have its first performance on March 15 in Maastricht, but after April it will be performed across the country. I am very curious, and keen of seeing it!