Why Francesca Woodman’s defiant self-portraits are the prototype for the ‘female gaze’

In contemporary discussions around art, film and photography, the term ‘female gaze’ gets bandied about a lot. But despite the frequency at which the term is applied to art works made by female-identifying practitioners, it is more often than not described as the binary opposite to the ‘male gaze’ without delineating what a ‘female gaze’ itself may actually entail. Furthermore, the prevalence of the term has only served to dilute its critical impact, rendering it little more than a buzzy phrase that doesn’t really delve into the particulars of an artist’s work. 

If there was a way in which we could start to define what a ‘female gaze’ would be without stating the obvious—made by and for women— and that didn’t resort to setting it up just as the opposite of the male gaze, then that that answer might be found in the deeply thoughtful self-portraiture of the late American photographer Francesca Woodman, who is the subject of a new exhibition at C/O Berlin—On Being an Angel, running through to 6 June. 

“I am as tired as the rest of you of looking at me,” so wrote Woodman, who died at the age of 22 in 1981, in a letter. Like all photographs, Woodman’s self-portraits—mostly staged in the crumbling setting of a disused attic space—hinge on the act of looking, but the significance of her work lies in her articulation of what it means to be ‘seen’ as a woman and what she chooses to do with that knowledge. Through a majority of black and white small format images, Woodman presents herself, often naked or partially so, in scenes laced with near Gothic-like mystery: dilapidated surfaces, overexposed light weeping through windows, dust and debris strewn over bare floorboards. There is the suggestion of human presence breathing in the walls; the body as a silvery blur, a whirl of motion, a hovering spectre. 

It would be easy to be swept away by the haunting beauty of Woodman’s photographs alone, and while the viewer can choose to read as much or as little as they like into an artist’s work, to only appreciate Woodman’s images on a surface level would be a grave disservice to the ideas that they put forth. By harnessing aesthetic beauty—through her own body and the enigmatic photographic setting she constructs (and needless to mention, through her beguiling technical proficiency)—Woodman becomes the master of her own image.

Take for example a series of works where Woodman situates herself in a glass cabinet: in some, she is a head and a pair of legs lolling from an open cupboard shared with stuffed animals; in another, she is a shadow, a phantom scabbling at the cabinet walls, begging for release. In such photographs, the correlation is clear: the female body is positioned as an aesthetic object for appreciation, a museum curiosity to be observed, a commodity on sale. But as both subject and maker of the image, already the power dynamic is confused. As art historian Abigail Solomon Godeau has said in relation to Woodman’s work, patriarchy constructs women as the bearers rather than makers of meaning. In this set of images, Woodman acknowledges the deep seated convention within society and culture to view women as objects, but re-makes it on her own terms—a re-making that is more often than not unexpected, disturbing and painfully strange. 

If there was a singular motif apparent in Woodman’s body of work—predominantly made while she was a student at Rhode Island School of Design—it is the dynamic between appearance and disappearance, presence and absence. In many of her images, Woodman captures herself through a long-exposure technique, which transforms her body into a grey whispery form—a ghost that merges with its surroundings. In others, she more explicitly interacts with her setting: for example, in Space 2 (1976) she stands naked against the wall, head and lower body obscured by scraps of wallpaper, creating the illusion that she is emerging from the space. Arguably, such images enact this feeling of being a woman in the world: of wanting to be seen and heard, but the wariness that comes from that desire. To be ‘seen’ as a woman, so often comes with a price to pay, and Woodman articulates this through her images that blink with the keen awareness of that: it would be easier to hide in the shadows, to not be consumed, to not be looked at and become the object of someone else’s fantasies. But the poignancy lies in the understanding that it is impossible, so what do you do with that realisation?

What Woodman chose to do with it was to put her body in front of the lens. She took the tropes of Western art history, the supple female nude, the suggestion of narcissism and longing, and undid it to say that the naked female body can be as weird, grotesque and complicated as anything else. It is Woodman’s ability to make strange these attributes that are thought to appeal to a ‘male gaze’ that makes her work a powerful case study in what a ‘female gaze’ might be. If there is indeed a ‘female gaze’ it is not just an opposite that exists purely in relation to its ‘male’ counterpart, but it is one that recognises the complications and contradictions of female experience, of wanting to be present and visible but finding ways to cope and survive with whatever that might entail, of giving what is expected but taking it back and rearranging it so that it defies any expectation in the first place. 

The title of the C/O exhibition, Like an Angel, takes its name from Woodman’s first series of images. An ‘angel’, a term of endearment for someone who is good or virtuous, is one that is often reserved for females, young girls in particular. It seems, however, that the ‘like’ in the title takes on ambiguous potential, indicating the societal pressure placed upon women to be good, to be obedient, angelic and docile, but the ultimate failure of that. To be ‘like an angel’ then is nothing more than a fabricated projection, and Woodman unravels and confirms the dark and eerie absurdity of that. 

Francesca Woodman: Like An Angel runs through to 6 June at C/O Berlin. 

All images ©Francesca Woodman.