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Skin, Surface and Subjectivity

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Skin, Surface and Subjectivity Skin, Surface and Subjectivity: The Self-Representational Photography of Francesca Woodman Harriet Katherine Riches University College London Ph.D .ýýCp .0 f ý0 .: . LO Dl waY. 2 Abstract This thesis examinesFrancesca Woodman's self-representationalphotography, not as a project of self-portraiture, but a means of exploring the relationship between self and objectified image through a re-staging of the drama of the photographic medium's processon her own skin. I re-situate Woodman's work within 1970s art practice by examining her relationship to performance, body art and photography, in order to disrupt the strictures of existing psycho-biographical interpretations. I also address the ways in which Woodman stages photographic dialogues with a diversity of historical precedents, from photographic contemporaries of the period, from the nineteenth-century, Surrealist photography, and from American modernist practice. The first chapter concentrates on Woodman's best known photographs, addressing the problems of the existing literature, and how in this series Woodman uses the technique of blurring to make reference to archaic photographic practice, as a haunting of the medium staged through an artful `stretching' of the print's surface and temporal fabric. The second chapter considers Woodman's description of `skin' in her photography, and the ways in which she performs a subject in the process of formation or breakdown. The third chapter concentrates on Woodman's reconfiguration of the photographic `crop' as she re-situates the process in the moment of framing, excising her own face and subjectivity in a kind of `self-cutting' which dramatises the medium's own language of implicit violence. The fourth chapter discusses an unpublished artist's book, in which Woodman's own skin is the support for a sequential act of disappearance. By re-enacting the photographic moment of the negative, the series alludes to the process of self-absenting on which representation depends. The final chapter examines Woodman's use of masking and repetition to re-enact within the single shot the photograph's status as copy, and the ways in which the imaged subject is always split and doubled in representation. 3 Contents List Illustrations 4 of .............................................................................. Acknowledgements 11 ............................................................................ Introduction: A Fugitive Testimony 14 ......................................................... 1: Photography'sHaunted Spaces:the `House' Series 36 .................................... 2: SecondSkins 71 .................................................................................. 3: Delicate Cutting 101 ............................................................................. 4: A DisappearingAct 128 ......................................................................... 5: Behind the Mask: Repetition Inter-subjective Space 159 and .............................. Bibliography 203 .................................................................................... Illustrations 223 ..................................................................................... 4 List of Illustrations Frontispiece FrancescaWoodman, Self-Portrait Talking to Vince gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, 1975-1978 Chapter 1 Fig. 1.1 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, 1976-1976 Fig. 1.2 FrancescaWoodman, House #3, gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, 1975-1976 Fig. 1.3 Francesca Woodman, House #4, gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, 1975-1976 Fig. 1.4 FrancescaWoodman, double page spreadfrom SomeDisordered Interior Geometries,1981 (published by SynapsePress, Philadelphia) Fig. 1.5 Clementina Hawarden,untitled photograph, c. 1861-1863,Victoria & Albert Museum, London Fig. 1.6 Man Ray, Untitled (Lee Miller's Torso), gelatin silver print, 1931 Fig. 1.7 Clementina Hawarden, Untitled (Clementina Maude), c. 1861-1862,Victoria & Albert Museum, London Fig. 1.8 Clementina Hawarden,untitled photograph, c. 1861-1862,Victoria & Albert Museum, London Fig. 1.9 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, 1975-1978 Fig. 1.10 FrancescaWoodman, from the Self-Deceit series, gelatin silver print, Rome, May 1977-August 1978 Fig. 1.11 FrancescaWoodman, from the Self-Deceit series, gelatin silver print, Rome, May 1977-August 1978 Fig. 1.12 Clementina Hawarden,untitled photograph, c. 1862-1863,Victoria & Albert Museum, London Fig. 1.13 Martha Rosier, still from Semioticsof the Kitchen, video, 6 minutes, black and white, with sound, 1975 Fig. 1.14 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, 1975-1978 5 Fig. 1.15 Ralph EugeneMeatyard, Portrait of My Mother-in-Law gelatin silver print, c. 1957-1958 Fig. 1.16 Ralph EugeneMeatyard, Untitled (Guy Mendes in three roles, multiple exposure),gelatin silver print, c. 1968-1970 Fig. 1.17 Ralph EugeneMeatyard, Untitled (Two Ghostswith Fireplace), gelatin silver print, c. 1969 Fig. 1.18 Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Untitled (Michael and Christopher outside brick building), gelatin silver print, 1960 Fig. 1.19 FrancescaWoodman, from the On Being An Angel series, gelatin silver print, Rome, September1977 Fig. 1.20 Duane Michals, Death Comes to the Old Lady, sequence of black and white photographs, 1969 Fig. 1.21 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Boulder, Colorado, 1972-1975 Fig. 1.22 FrancescaWoodman, Polka Dots, gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, 1975-1978 Fig. 1.23 ClementinaHawarden, untitled photograph, c. 1862, Victoria & Albert Museum, London Fig. 1.24 Julia Margaret Cameron,Thomas Carlyle, collodion print, 1867, GeorgeEastman House, Rochester,New York Chapter 2 Fig. 2.1 Francesca Woodman, Space Squared, gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, 1975-1976 Fig. 2.2 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Rome, May 1977-August 1978 Fig. 2.3 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, 1975-1978 Fig. 2.4 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, MacDowell Colony, Peterborough,New Hampshire, Summer 1980 Fig. 2.5 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print New York City, 1979-1980 Fig. 2.6 Francesca Woodman, untitled gelatin silver print, New York City, 1979-1980 6 Fig. 2.7 Aaron Siskind, Providence,gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, 1976 Fig. 2.8 Aaron Siskind, Homage to Franz Kline (Jalapa 45), gelatin silver print, 1973 Fig. 2.9 Aaron Siskind, New York 63, gelatin silver print, New York, 1976 Fig. 2.10 Francesca Woodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1978 Fig. 2.11 Capitoline Venus,Roman copy of a Hellenistic original, c. 120 B. C.E., Musei Capitolini, Rome, Italy Fig. 2.12 Hannah Wilke, from S. O. S. Starification Object Series gelatin silver prints, series of black and white photographs, 1972-1982 Fig. 2.13 HannahWilke, details of S.O. S. Starification Object Series Fig. 2.14 Eleanor Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, 144 black and white photographs, 18 x 12.5 cm each, 1973, Collection, Art Institute of Chicago Fig. 2.15 Sue Madden, photographof performanceof Chrysalis (1974) in Studio International, 1976 Fig. 2.16 Francesca Woodman, Then at one point I did not need to translate the notes: they went directly to my hands, gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, c. 1976 Fig. 2.17 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, 1975-1978 Fig. 2.18 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, c. 1976 Chapter 3 Fig. 3.1 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Boulder, Colorado, 1972-1975 Fig. 3.2 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Boulder, Colorado, 1972-1975 Fig. 3.3 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, New York, 1979-1980 Fig. 3.4 Hans Bellmer, Unica, gelatin silver print, 1958 7 Fig. 3.5 Hans Bellmer, Unica, gelatin silver print, 1958 Fig. 3.6 Hans Bellmer, Unica, gelatin silver print, 1958 Fig. 3.7 Hans Bellmer, Unica, gelatin silver print, 1958 Fig. 3.8 Hans Belmer, Unica, reproducedon the cover of Le Surrealisme,meme, no. 4 (Spring 1958) Fig. 3.9 Francesca Woodman, Horizontale, gelatin silver print, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976-1977 Fig. 3.10 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Boulder, Colorado, 1972-1975 Fig. 3.11 Paul Strand, Torso, Taos, New Mexico, gelatin silver print, 1930 Fig. 3.12 Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keefe, A Portrait (Torso), gelatin silver print, 1918 Fig. 3.13 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, 1975-1976 Fig. 3.14 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, 1975-1976- Fig. 3.15 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, 1975-1978 Fig. 3.16 Ana Mendieta, Glass on Body, performancerelated photographs, University of Iowa, Iowa, January-March 1972 Fig. 3.17 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print, Providence,Rhode Island, 1975-1976 Fig. 3.18 FrancescaWoodman, untitled gelatin silver print Providence,Rhode Island, 1975-1976 Chapter 4 Fig. 4.1 FrancescaWoodman, first page from Portrait of a Reputation, gelatin silver print on card, Providence,Rhode Island, 1975-1979 Fig. 4.2 Francesca Woodman, second page from Portrait of a Reputation, gelatin silver print on card, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1979 Fig. 4.3 Francesca Woodman, third page from Portrait of a Reputation, gelatin silver print on card, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1979 8 Fig. 4.4
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