Undergraduate Research Symposium

The work of Francesca Woodman has haunted many since her death from suicide at age 22, prompting discussions of not only the space available for the female consciousness in art but of the female body. Over the course of her short life, American photographer Francesca Woodman captured the nuance and mystery of the female psyche by composing over 10,000 photographs, often nudes of herself, reflecting the ways the body and mind unite in some ways and are in conflict in others. She places her nude form against signifiers of the domestic, such as wallpaper flowers or the tile of a kitchen floor, to illustrate the way that the female body is swallowed up by its environment. This analysis focuses heavily on studies of art and art history as it relates to surrealism and self-portraiture, which are both featured heavily in Woodman’s work, as they reflect the psychological toll being forced into a private sphere. By looking at prominent pieces created when Woodman was at the height of her creative and destructive energy in the mid to late 1970s, it is evidenced that the mind is depicted as a physical space in her photos (bare rooms, dirty hallways, and empty fish tanks), giving indications of inner conflict (such as her fascination with imagery that reflects suicide, eerily predicting her own), and illustrating her mentality as a woman. By understanding Woodman’s work as it applies to the female mind and not simply the female form it will be possible to discover a new and previously under-observed area of her work, and will open up a new way in which the female body can be seen outside of its pure sexuality and can reflect the struggles of the female psyche.