Flesh & Film

A new book, entitled Francesca Woodman: The Roman Years Between Skin and Film (Contrasto), takes a new look at the life and work of Francesca Woodman through a fresh analysis of the photographs and writings from her Roman sojourn. A precocious artist and a figure caught between two cultures –American and Italian– Francesca Woodman reached the acme of her artistic parable in Rome, where she fully defined her aesthetic and stylistic sensibilities. The book is available here.

Francesca Woodman Retrospective

Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) was an artist decisively of her time, yet her photographs retain an undeniable immediacy. Thirty years after her death, they continue to inspire audiences with their dazzling ambiguities and their remarkably rich explorations of self-portraiture and the body in architectural space. This November, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, marks the beginning of a retrospective, the first in the United States in more than two decades, that explores the complex body of work produced by the young artist until her suicide at age 22. Together with Woodman's artist books and videos, the photographs on view form a portrait of an artist engaged with major concerns of her era — femininity and female subjectivity, the nature of photography — but devoted to a distinctive, deeply personal vision. On view at the SFMOMA from November 5, to February 20, 2012.