By: Adam Zhang

Take a look at the photo below. The image displays an old anatomical museum with glass cases on the wall featuring biological wax models of fetuses and more. The picture seems relatively simple, but it gives the mind a sense of eeriness. One source of its strange, foreboding feeling is a figure on the right, what looks like a young girl crouched down on the floor. She’s in a panic, in fear of something that might not be visible, for she has her arms around her body and neck.

The mysteriousness intensifies when we realize her face is intentionally blurred and the strange wax models give off uncomfortable sensations.

These are the photographs made by Francesca Woodman, a young American artist whose photos don’t have only one explanation. Her style of photography makes the viewer question the intent of her art.

There is a trending pattern in all of Woodman’s works; In her photos, the color is in monotone black and white, giving a ghoulish, ancient feel. She puts herself in these photos into symbolistic postures, as if trying to tell you something.

Her images also blur, or completely exclude, the facial details of people. Perhaps she wants viewers to feel like they don’t know who or what anything was in photos intentionally. In any case, Woodman’s works are intriguing, and the meanings behind her eerie images are up for interpretation.

This one depicts a human-like figure. However, unlike a human, the lady in the picture has no visible feet, and it seems like she is flying. With the blurred face and the spooky background, one can assume that Woodman intended the figure in the photo to be a ghost.

By now, we can say that Woodman enjoys the use of mysteriousness to let the viewer interpret the image for themselves. Why is this so? Looking at Woodman’s life and death, we can find clues.

Francesca Woodman was born in Denver, Colorado, into a very artistic family. Her older brother Charles said that art in the family was like a religion. Their mother, Betty, made ceramics while their father George painted and taught at a university. When Francesca went to boarding school in 1972, her father gave her a Yashica camera. She started taking pictures after her teacher encouraged her to do so.

Woodman liked to use the warping/blurring, or Victorian “spirit photography” technique in her early photography age. Slow shutter speeds and double exposures are the settings required for this. This technique was used to create ghosts in photos.

Unfortunately, in the late 1970s, Woodman started suffering from depression. Her last photos were made in around 1979 and 1980. A friend of Woodman recalled in a documentary that a few weeks before Woodman’s own death, she had stopped creating photos. Then, Woodman finally snapped and committed suicide at the young age of 22.

Despite such a tragic death, Francesca Woodman was a teenage genius; her mastery and passion for her art at such as young age made her unique.