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Francesca Woodman: The Hybrid Space of Photography

Lee, Phil 1

1상명대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This essay reassess the photography of Francesca Woodman in the context of the discourses of photography in the late 1970s and 80s. I point out that the lack of the analysis of Woodman’s photographic images in postmodernists’ discussions of photography overlooked Woodman’s pursuit of both the conceptual and the aesthetic in her works. By a thorough analysis of Woodman’s photographs, I observe that Woodman’s work not only has a visual and conceptual power that continuously requires the analysis of the photographic image itself, but also has a hybrid condition of the medium that postmodernists claimed to be postmodern. I argue that the emphasis of Woodman being a female artist and approaching her work from the representation of the female body and of female desire also overlook Woodman’s more complex insight into the context of her contemporary art and her exploration of the photography as a multi-faceted medium. Apart from the application of feminist theory and psychoanalysis, I explore how Woodman’s interest in blurring the boundaries among human body/things/space has been represented as photographic images. Furthermore, I explore how Woodman’s radical approach to the photographic medium achieves aphotographic image that includes the painterly/sculptural/cinematic/theatrical. Finally, my meta-criticism of postmodernist art criticism through the analysis of Woodman’s photography argues for a photographic theory that is simultaneously aesthetic and conceptual.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.