The Artist’s Books

by Francesca Woodman

While Francesca Woodman’s photographic work has been widely celebrated, little has been published until now about her remarkable series of artist’s books. The basis of these works is in books that Woodman bought in local shops and flea markets throughout her travels in Italy in the 1970s, which she later repurposed to provide intriguing backgrounds onto which she pasted her prints, trans- parencies, and written annotations. Collected together for the first time, these books demonstrate a sophisticated relationship to narrative and sequence and offer a new understanding of the scope of Woodman’s engagement with the book form. Francesca The Artist’s Books collects for the very first time every page of all eight of Francesca Woodman’s unique artist’s books in one comprehensive volume. It includes two newly discovered books which have never been seen before, alongside better-known titles such as Some Disordered Interior Geometries.

416 pages, Hardcover

Published May 16, 2023

About the author

Francesca Woodman (USA, 1958 – 1981) was a photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring herself and female models. Many of her photographs show young women who are nude, who are blurred (due to movement and long exposure times), who are merging with their surroundings, or whose faces are obscured. Her work continues to be the subject of much attention, years after she committed suicide at the age of 22.

Francesca Woodman was born April 3, 1958, in Denver, Colorado, to well-known artists George Woodman and Betty Woodman. Her older brother Charles later became an associate professor of electronic art. Her mother is Jewish and her father is from a Protestant background.

Woodman attended public school in Boulder, Colorado, between 1963 and 1971 except for second grade in Italy. She began high school in 1972 at the private Massachusetts boarding school Abbot Academy, where she began to develop her photographic skills. Abbot Academy merged with Phillips Academy in 1973; Woodman graduated from the public Boulder High School in 1975. Through 1975, she spent summers with her family in Italy. She spent her time in Italy in the Florentine countryside, where she lived on an old farm with her parents.

Beginning in 1975, Woodman attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, Rhode Island. She studied in Rome between 1977 and 1978 in a RISD honors program. As she spoke fluent Italian, she was able to befriend Italian intellectuals and artists. She went back to Rhode Island in late 1978 to graduate from RISD.
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