Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman was born on April 3rd 1958. Her parents were artists, George and Betty Woodman, her older brother Charles later became an associate professor of electronic art. Woodman graduated from high school in 1975. After this, she spent her Summers with family in Italy. Woodman attended The School of Design and studied in Rome between 1977 and 1978 in a RISD honours program. In 1978, she went back to Rhode Island to graduate. In 1979, Woodman moved to New York. After deciding to make a career in photography, she sent her portfolio to fashion photographers but "her solicitations did not lead anywhere". Around 1980, she became extremely depressed due to her work not getting attention and a broken relationship. She survived a suicide attempt, and lived with her parents in Manhattan afterwards. On January 19th 1981, Woodman committed suicide by jumping out of a loft window in New York. She was 22. A friend of hers wrote "things had been bad, there had been therapy, things had gotten better, guard had been let down". Her father suggested that her suicide was related to an unsuccessful application for funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Objectively, this image shows a girl in a white dress spinning around with her arms outstretched. She seems to be wearing black tights or socks. We cannot see any kind of facial features in this image as it is blurred. There is a white line painted on the ground, which suggests that this photographic setting may have been a car park. The background looks very bleak and bare, and although not much of what is behind her is seen, it doesn't look like a very happy place.
Subjectively, I think that this photo was made to look this way for a reason. Woodman suffered from depression, and the way that this image looks - dull, bleak, unhappy, etc. could reflect how she was feeling at this time.

My attempt:

For my attempt, I am going to photograph my younger sister, Poppy. As she is autistic, she finds it very hard to sit still and relax. Because of this, she will pace around for hours a day and I want to show this through photos. I will take them on location in my living room, as when she comes back from school this is where she will usually pace. I will have the camera on a slow shutter speed to capture the movement of her walking backwards and forwards. I will also try to include some of her favourite things in the images, such as her toys, puzzles, etc. I hope to get something similar to Francesca Woodman.

I think that this photo shoot went very well. I got some really good images and I am really happy with how it went. It was difficult to 

I didn't do that much editing to these photos, as I didn't think that a lot needed to be done to them. So I just cropped a few of the images and put them in black and white, as Francesca Woodman's photos are all in black and white.