David Levi StraussBesprekingen

This elegant volume presents more than 40 vintage photographs by the pioneering American photographer Francesca Woodman (1958–81), many of which have never before been seen. These photographs span the creative arc of the artist’s life, focusing on the varied thought processes, interests and influences that inspired her work.
Clustered thematically, Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories highlights previously unexplored relational contexts, drawing deeply on Woodman's formative years in Providence, Rhode Island, and Italy, and featuring previously unpublished photographs and archival materials.
In the newly commissioned essay “Impure Alchemy,” critic and novelist Chris Kraus explores Francesca Woodman’s life via her work, drawing upon her journals and letters as primary source materials, and exploring the technical means and literary strategies that animate Woodman's works.
Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories portrays the artist’s lasting impact on generations of artists, and offers a compendium of images, which, as Kraus writes, still “inspire new mysteries and questions.”

Francesca Woodman became interested in photography in her early teens. This volume, combining text by Woodman, and by those who knew her, with many of her unpublished images, shows her intense relation with the camera. In 1981, Francesca Woodman died at the age of 22.

'Between the Eyes' contains some excellent essays about how we see and perceive images, and how photography's power has diminished in recent generations. The essays on propaganda and how photography's use in telling stories accurately has been effected by its use in the mainstream are particularly memorable.

Barcellona, Centro d'Arte Santa Monica, 20 aprile - 7 giugno 1998