Francesca Woodman loved gelatin prints, long exposures, and cemeteries. Jokes, vintage clothing, angels and ghost girls… It’s amazing how powerfully a nude body can activate any landscape. The first thing a photographer needs to figure out is how to make an image speak for itself. Woodman understood this at a very young age very well. — Chris Kraus, 2019*
For the Marian Goodman Gallery publication FRANCESCA WOODMAN: ALTERNATE STORIES—a selection of over forty vintage photographs, many of which have never before been seen—Chris Kraus has written a new essay on Woodman’s work, drawing on the artist’s journals and letters. See link below for details.
FRANCESCA WOODMAN: ALTERNATE STORIES
“Impure Alchemy,” essay by Chris Kraus
(New York: Marian Goodman Gallery, 2022)
*Chris Kraus, “Proposition,” Looking Writing Reading Looking: Writers on Art from the Louisiana Collection (Humlebæk, Denmark: Louisiana Museum of Art, 2019).
Francesca Woodman, Alternate Stories, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, November 2–December 23, 2021, from top: Untitled, Florence, Italy, circa 1976, vintage gelatin silver print; Untitled, Italy, 1977–1978, vintage gelatin silver print; Untitled, Rome, Italy, 1977, vintage gelatin silver print; Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976, vintage gelatin silver print; Untitled, Florence, Italy, circa 1976, vintage gelatin silver print; Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975–1978, vintage gelatin silver print. Images courtesy and © Woodman Family Foundation / Artists Right Society (ARS), New York and Marian Goodman Gallery.
