{"id":31996,"date":"2012-05-23T11:28:12","date_gmt":"2012-05-23T15:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=31996"},"modified":"2012-05-23T10:28:25","modified_gmt":"2012-05-23T14:28:25","slug":"finding-francesca-woodman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Francesca Woodman"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Francesca Woodman, Caryatid<\/em>, 1980, diazotype, 7' 5 in. x 3'. Courtesy George and Betty Woodman \u00a9 2012 George and Betty Woodman<\/p><\/div>\n

\nWe\u2019re fascinated by artists who die young. Something about the unnaturalness of an early death gives us a kind of morbid thrill. We hail their genius, attracted by the mystery of the unknown (and unknowable). Maybe we\u2019re envious\u2014at least, the parts of us that seek fame and approval. For the dead, everything is fixed and frozen; there\u2019s no more work and no more pressure to perform. Pore as we will over their output, what they\u2019ve left behind in the world will never change.<\/p>\n

\nFrancesca Woodman was an artist who died young. She committed suicide, jumping from a window when she was twenty-two. I was thinking of waiting to tell you that, of trying to withhold the information until later in this essay, but the effort seemed futile: if you\u2019re in art school, or read the New York Times<\/em>, or have looked at the Guggenheim\u2019s Web site<\/a> lately, or even if you get the Skint<\/a>, a daily New York events e-mail, you already know.<\/p>\n

The Skint mention is particularly curious. Somehow, in a newsletter composed of brief, one-line descriptions of featured events, Woodman\u2019s suicide merited inclusion: \u201cThru 6\/13: 120 works of photographer francesca woodman (nsfw), who committed suicide at age 22 in 1981, go on display at the Guggenheim.\u201d The implication seems to be that her suicide either makes her more interesting or more worthy of an exhibition.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The blurb reiterates the central problem surrounding Woodman: her art and her life have become inextricably linked. You can\u2019t have the photos without the suicide, and quite probably, you wouldn\u2019t have had the suicide without the photos. But in the equation, the photos get lost, subsumed by a story they weren\u2019t meant to tell. Is there a way to pull the two pieces of her legacy apart?<\/p>\n

\nWoodman produced some six hundred photographs, 120 of which are currently on view at the Guggenheim. This seems like a hugely prolific output for someone so young, but she came from a family of artists: her parents, George and Betty, as well as her older brother, Charlie, are artists, though each worked in a different medium (George: paintings; Betty: ceramics; Charlie: video; Francesca: photography). The children were raised with a strong work ethic and the idea that art was \u201cserious business,\u201d says George, in a documentary about the family, The Woodmans<\/em><\/a>, by C. Scott Willis. \u201cYou don\u2019t go off and do hobbies on Sunday or something like that. You make art.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so Francesca did, from the time she was a teenager, through her years at the Rhode Island School of Design, through her summer at the MacDowell Colony, and through the two years she lived in New York. Photographing was so much her natural state that one of her best friends, Sloan Rankin, says in the film that she became alarmed when Woodman called, not long before her suicide, to say she wasn\u2019t taking pictures.<\/p>\n

Woodman\u2019s most frequent subject was herself, most often nude. She photographed her own body ceaselessly, in black and white, often in ruinous spaces: rooms with peeling wallpaper, crumbling paint, light streaming through uncovered windows. She staged scenes with props: mirrors and gloves and eels and panes of glass. She blurred her image so that she appeared like an active ghost\u2014or perhaps more appropriately, after the title of one of her series, like an angel.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>

Francesca Woodman, Untitled<\/em>, 1977, black-and-white photograph, 3 in. x 3 in. From the series \u201cAngels.\u201d Courtesy George and Betty Woodman \u00a9 George and Betty Woodman<\/p><\/div>In two of the \u201cAngels\u201d pictures, Woodman positions the camera just above herself. In both, she pushes out her chest, the outline of her breasts and arms creating an abstract shape against the empty space beyond them. Taken together, the two images form a yin-yang, a study in complementary contrasts: in one, Woodman\u2019s body, lying on the floor and positioned on the bottom of the frame, is awash in bleaching light; in the other, her body fills the top portion of the photo, with her breasts silhouetted against a thick, black darkness.<\/p>\n\n

Technically, these photos are nudes. They are also, technically, self-portraits. But they don\u2019t feel much like either. They feel instead like explorations\u2014experiments in the art of photography, for which she used herself as a prop. And therein lies the great irony of Woodman\u2019s work: though she photographed nearly every inch of her body, she revealed so little. Though her work is ostensibly self-involved, its true interests seem formal (investigating the properties of light, playing with framing), epistemological (how does a body relate to the space around it?), or art historical (what happens when a nude woman is both the subject and the object of a work?). And so, though we look to the photographs for clues to the mystery of her suicide, we\u2019ll never find them. Woodman\u2019s art does not answer the questions raised by her life.<\/p>\n

The first time I looked at Woodman\u2019s photos, in reproduction, I was engaged but not invested. The images elicited only occasional strong emotions, and mainly I was troubled by my inability to keep track of her, even after a hundred pages. I confused her with the friends she sometimes used as models, and even when she was clearly the subject, she looked like a different person from picture to picture: in one, a bit pudgy and awkward, in another, thin and stunningly beautiful. Surprisingly, she called to mind photographer Cindy Sherman (also currently the subject of a major museum retrospective, at MoMA), who uses makeup, prosthetics, and all manner of illusions to transform herself into an incredible range of characters. The work of both women places the \u201cself\u201d of self-portraiture in full view, but in doubt.<\/p>\n

Then I watched The Woodmans<\/em>, and everything changed. Willis\u2019s powerfully nuanced film tells a broad story of Francesca\u2019s life, beginning with her parents\u2019 marriage and ending with her posthumous fame and its effect on her family (in a word: complicated). Willis establishes Francesca\u2019s presence not just through interviews with family and friends, but also through the use of her photos, videos\u2014she experimented a bit with the medium; six of her most complete videos are on view at the Guggenheim\u2014and journal entries.<\/p>\n

The journal writings are eloquent and almost unbearably intimate. In one of the most powerful moments of the film, Willis reproduces the text of Woodman\u2019s last journal entry against the backdrop of her video footage:<\/p>\n

\n

\nThis action that I foresee has nothing to do with melodrama. It is that life as lived by me now is a series of exceptions \u2026 I was (am?) not unique but special. This is why I was an artist \u2026 I was inventing a language for people to see the \teveryday things that I also see \u2026 and show them something different \u2026 Nothing to do with not being able \u201cto take it\u201d in the big city or w\/ self doubt or because my heart is gone. And not to teach people a lesson. Simply the other side.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

These words conjure Woodman in a way that her artwork doesn\u2019t. Reading them makes the fact of her suicide\u2014even though we\u2019ve known it all along\u2014completely heartbreaking.<\/p>\n

I next saw Woodman\u2019s photographs at the Guggenheim, where my emotional connection to them felt stronger. Of course looking at art live is always more visceral and stimulating than paging through a book, but there were little things: it seemed eerier, now, that Woodman wore a ring similar to one I wear. Her elusiveness seemed more significant, possibly some kind of taunt. Staring at one photograph, which shows her lower half\u2014naked legs with feet in black Chinese slippers\u2014sitting in a chair alongside a silhouette of herself on the floor, her flesh suddenly seemed real. I could envision myself reaching out and touching her bare thighs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Francesca Woodman, Untitled<\/em>, 1976, black-and-white photograph, 5 1\/2 in. x 5 3\/5 in. Courtesy George and Betty Woodman \u00a9 George and Betty Woodman<\/p><\/div>\n

\nBut no, I thought, this was a trap\u2014the snare of retrospect. \u201cHistory is by necessity written backward; its narrative takes shape with an ending already firmly in place,\u201d writes curator Corey Keller in the exhibition catalogue. Here I was falling prey to history; the movie had made Woodman\u2019s suicide real to me, and now I was reading it into her photographs. All of which was compounded by a creeping sensation of feminist guilt: women artists are perpetually shoehorned into the \u201cart as life\u201d equation, their biographies dismissively used to explain their work.<\/p>\n

Still, any attempt to remove Woodman\u2019s life entirely from the story of her art is impossible. Keller points out that the two were intertwined for her: while at RISD, she lived and worked in an old industrial space that served as a setting for both her photos and her performative personality. And of course the decision to reproduce and manipulate one\u2019s image\u2014to conceal, blur or crop it\u2014is itself a manifestation of the artist\u2019s personality. \u201cWoodman\u2019s work is and is not autobiographical,\u201d writes Guggenheim curator Jennifer Blessing in her catalogue essay. \u201cI don\u2019t see them as autobiographical,\u201d Betty Woodman says in the film, referring to her daughter\u2019s photos, before adding, \u201cbut I think, in a way, all the art we make is in some ways autobiographical\u2014it\u2019s about us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toward the end of her life, Francesca\u2019s work became less explicitly self-involved. Though she still photographed herself, she also went in new directions, using a process for architectural blueprints called diazotype to make large-scale collages based around themes, such as a panorama of zigzags that appear within images of arms, tin cones, a dress, and a building. One of her most exciting works from this period is a ten-by-fifteen-foot diazotype collage called Temple<\/em>, for which she photographed people as caryatids and enlarged tiling patterns she found in New York bathrooms. The piece\u2014on view not at the Guggenheim but at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the exhibition \u201cSpies in the House of Art<\/a>\u201d (hanging across the room from a Cindy Sherman, no less)\u2014tantalizingly suggests a move away from inhabiting preexisting space toward creating her own. Standing before it, I wondered what else Woodman might have created, had she lived.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Francesca Woodman, Space2<\/em>, 1976, black-and-white photograph, 5 2\/5 in. x 5 1\/5 in. Courtesy George and Betty Woodman \u00a9 George and Betty Woodman<\/p><\/div><\/center><\/p>\n

Wandering through the final room of the Guggenheim exhibition, I stopped in front of a mesmerizing self-portrait. In it, Woodman is naked, with only a scarf around her neck and a ribbon holding her hair in a side ponytail. She stands with her hands on her hips, her face awash in bright light, and stares directly at the camera, her gaze unusually confrontational. The overall effect was so unsettling that I started to wonder if it was an illusion, if somehow she was wearing a mask (a prop she used in other works).<\/p>\n

Suddenly a male voice yelled out, \u201cHi, Francesca!\u201d I turned around, startled. Was he talking to the dead artist?<\/p>\n

\nNo. A woman responded with a wave and a smile, and they began to talk. But it seemed plausible that he might have been trying for Woodman. She was undeniably present.<\/p>\n


\nJillian Steinhauer is a Brooklyn-based writer and assistant editor of Hyperallergic<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re fascinated by artists who die young. Something about the unnaturalness of an early death gives us a kind of morbid thrill. We hail their genius, attracted by the mystery of the unknown (and unknowable). Maybe we\u2019re envious\u2014at least, the parts of us that seek fame and approval. For the dead, everything is fixed and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":339,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[35,7638,1416,7637,7639,705,100,6024],"class_list":["post-31996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-art","tag-betty-woodman","tag-cindy-sherman","tag-francesa-woodman","tag-george-woodman","tag-moma","tag-photography","tag-suicide"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFinding Francesca Woodman by Jillian Steinhauer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"May 23, 2012 \u2013 We\u2019re fascinated by artists who die young. Something about the unnaturalness of an early death gives us a kind of morbid thrill. We hail their genius,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Finding Francesca Woodman by Jillian Steinhauer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"May 23, 2012 \u2013 We\u2019re fascinated by artists who die young. Something about the unnaturalness of an early death gives us a kind of morbid thrill. We hail their genius,\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-05-23T15:28:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/2_Woodman_Caryatid_01.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1264\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"2700\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jillian Steinhauer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jillian Steinhauer\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Jillian Steinhauer\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/5bf4668f84fa184cd3284efb2b5448df\"},\"headline\":\"Finding Francesca Woodman\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-05-23T15:28:12+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/\"},\"wordCount\":714,\"commentCount\":23,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/2_Woodman_Caryatid_01-479x1024.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"art\",\"Betty Woodman\",\"Cindy Sherman\",\"Francesa Woodman\",\"George Woodman\",\"MoMA\",\"photography\",\"suicide\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/\",\"name\":\"Finding Francesca Woodman by Jillian Steinhauer\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/2_Woodman_Caryatid_01-479x1024.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-05-23T15:28:12+00:00\",\"description\":\"May 23, 2012 \u2013 We\u2019re fascinated by artists who die young. Something about the unnaturalness of an early death gives us a kind of morbid thrill. We hail their genius,\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/2_Woodman_Caryatid_01.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/2_Woodman_Caryatid_01.jpg\",\"width\":\"1264\",\"height\":\"2700\",\"caption\":\"Francesca Woodman Caryatid, New York, 1980 Diazotype, 227.3 x 92.1 cm Courtesy George and Betty Woodman \u00a9 2012 George and Betty Woodman\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Finding Francesca Woodman\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/5bf4668f84fa184cd3284efb2b5448df\",\"name\":\"Jillian Steinhauer\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a8404bac331c1e512627b4b3e6d5402a26919d7440dd687adc45cc3dafa98690?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a8404bac331c1e512627b4b3e6d5402a26919d7440dd687adc45cc3dafa98690?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Jillian Steinhauer\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/jsteinhauer\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Finding Francesca Woodman by Jillian Steinhauer","description":"May 23, 2012 \u2013 We\u2019re fascinated by artists who die young. Something about the unnaturalness of an early death gives us a kind of morbid thrill. We hail their genius,","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Finding Francesca Woodman by Jillian Steinhauer","og_description":"May 23, 2012 \u2013 We\u2019re fascinated by artists who die young. Something about the unnaturalness of an early death gives us a kind of morbid thrill. We hail their genius,","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2012-05-23T15:28:12+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1264,"height":2700,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/2_Woodman_Caryatid_01.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Jillian Steinhauer","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Jillian Steinhauer","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/"},"author":{"name":"Jillian Steinhauer","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/5bf4668f84fa184cd3284efb2b5448df"},"headline":"Finding Francesca Woodman","datePublished":"2012-05-23T15:28:12+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/"},"wordCount":714,"commentCount":23,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/2_Woodman_Caryatid_01-479x1024.jpg","keywords":["art","Betty Woodman","Cindy Sherman","Francesa Woodman","George Woodman","MoMA","photography","suicide"],"articleSection":["Arts & Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/","name":"Finding Francesca Woodman by Jillian Steinhauer","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/2_Woodman_Caryatid_01-479x1024.jpg","datePublished":"2012-05-23T15:28:12+00:00","description":"May 23, 2012 \u2013 We\u2019re fascinated by artists who die young. Something about the unnaturalness of an early death gives us a kind of morbid thrill. We hail their genius,","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/2_Woodman_Caryatid_01.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/2_Woodman_Caryatid_01.jpg","width":"1264","height":"2700","caption":"Francesca Woodman Caryatid, New York, 1980 Diazotype, 227.3 x 92.1 cm Courtesy George and Betty Woodman \u00a9 2012 George and Betty Woodman"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/23\/finding-francesca-woodman\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Finding Francesca Woodman"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/5bf4668f84fa184cd3284efb2b5448df","name":"Jillian Steinhauer","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a8404bac331c1e512627b4b3e6d5402a26919d7440dd687adc45cc3dafa98690?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a8404bac331c1e512627b4b3e6d5402a26919d7440dd687adc45cc3dafa98690?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Jillian Steinhauer"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/jsteinhauer\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/339"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31996"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32159,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31996\/revisions\/32159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}