Francesca Woodman:

Portrait of a Reputation

Francesca Woodman: Portrait of a Reputation presented an early episode in the artistic life of American artist Francesca Woodman (1958-81). Featuring over 40 unique, vintage prints, as well as notes, letters, postcards, and other ephemera related to the artist’s burgeoning career, this exhibition detailed Woodman’s creative coming-of-age primarily during the years 1975-79. Introducing this material for the first time, the exhibition was drawn from the personal collection of George Lange, a long-time friend and classmate of Woodman’s at Rhode Island School of Design.

This exhibition detailed how the artist came into her creative voice and her singular approach to photography at a notably young age. It demonstrates Woodman’s virtuosity in formation—the creative impulses that yielded a distinctive voice, and also a more nuanced understanding of the context in which she worked and which is featured so prominently in her photographs from this time. Ranging from portraits in her studio/apartment in college to self-portraits in the bucolic Colorado landscape in which she was raised, these works capture Woodman’s hallmark approach to art-making: enigmatic, rigorous, and poignant, all at once. The exhibition also included select photographs of Woodman made by George Lange during this period. Taken together, Francesca Woodman: Portrait of a Reputation offered a nuanced and in-depth study of this formative period in the development of this most adept artist.

Check out all the Francesca Woodman Programs happening at the museum here!

An accompanying publication, co-published with Rizzoli, features essays by Abrams and Drew Sawyer, curator of photographs at the Brooklyn Museum of Art