Francesca Woodman: Tortured Artist Doll or Person?

Posted on August 22, 2003 in Culture Photography Suicide

This is a response to some provocative thoughts by Yule Heibel about photographer Francesca Woodman entitled “Glamour is a dangerous thing“:

First, I bid caution on attempting to divine reasons for Woodman’s suicide from her photos. Suicide is a complex behavior that psychiatrists do not fully understand: a few have wondered if the supposed link to depression is real, that it may be that we’re looking at an unrelated, coincidental syndrome. Consider two common anecdotes: first, the person who seems happy to the world who suddenly for no explicable reason does herself in. Second, the depressive such as myself who wallows for years without ever attempting suicide. We’re a long way from understanding either suicide or art: it’s best that we refrain from imposing interpretations of an art based on it. (I’m a fan of Susan Sontag, incidentally.)

Second, to the question of the art itself. I was deeply moved by the photos. They weren’t satiric as Bellmer’s were (I laughed several times as I went through the exhibits on that link): simply beautiful and ambiguous. If we base our understanding of the photos on the photos themselves, I would give this reading: that Woodman at once wanted to celebrate the beauty of her body while at the same time not desiring to represent herself as a mere sex object. I can understand this pressure: as a writer, I find myself angonizing over sensational scenes. The inclusion of violence in my work is my particular problem. At once I understand the power to sensationalize a work and the danger of it being taken as a kind of pornographer.

Observe, for example, how the evil villain in The Terminator was so readily translated into the “good android” in the two sequels. This, I think, demonstrates the power of violence as a kind of pornography: too many people found the scenes of the first Terminator exciting. They wanted the good guys to be doing it and Arnold obliged the hunger.

If you perceive the awfulness of this, you understand my concerns about what I put across when I contemplate including acts of violence in my work.

If you read my work, however, I don’t think that this question is apparent. At least not in my fiction. Certainly not in my photography.

What is Woodman’s work about? I prefer to keep my comments to a minimum and base them on the photographs because Davison and others have only offered oblique insights from her life. She is described, for example, as “distant…not particularly communicative”. The details of her therapy are vague and inspecific. We’re building a fiction — a Woodman doll — based on scanty evidence. The fact that she was mentally ill fascinates us and we weave a story from it.

I photograph flowers and trees, a common passion I dare say. I give any reader a challenge to attempt to read me based on what you think you see in my photographs. Can you find the depressive in them? I think that if you are looking for the depressive, I am sure that you will find him, but others who have been entirely ignorant of my history have examined these materials and been oblivious to the fact of my mental illness.

When I am depressed, I don’t take pictures or even write much. So what does this say about the material that I create when I am not depressed? Could it be that Woodman created these images in a “high” period? Could her suicide be founded on something else and these pictures leave us with no clue about the motives? I think it is likely.

As a final point in understanding Woodman better, I suggest a re-examination of the works of Edward Weston. Weston often brings his camera close to his models, decapitating them, showing their parts. He also depicts green peppers and lettuce leaves in the same light. His journals reveal an obsession with the abstract qualities of these objects, an ambiguity which is amusingly highlighted when in one entry he describes his sense of loss when his wife takes a particular exquisite bell pepper and chops it up for the salad.

It may be that Woodman’s work should be viewed “only” as bold experiments in seeing. She herself says that the main reason why she uses herself as a model is because she is always available. Should we discount the words of the artist herself when striving for an understanding of the whys and wherefores of this piece? Are we going to assume that she is a liar?

From the little I have seen and heard, I must conclude this: that Woodman, who happened to suffer from mental illness, created several stunning photographs. That they leave the viewers with a sense of ambiguous beauty. She committed suicide. The photos were “discovered” and commented upon. I think we might consider Susan Sontag’s thoughts on another famous dead artist, Diana Arbus. Our response to Woodman says far more about our fascination with the idea of the “tortured artist”, that this itself is a text which might be examined, but ultimately, the photos themselves are entirely different. We should refrain from layering our projections and our theories on them. We must resist interpretation, turning them into something they are not.

Like all good art, Woodman’s work is ambiguous. That, I think, is her best tribute and the most honest way to appreciate what she left for us.