Francesca Woodman’s photographs have been studied and celebrated for their critical dialogue with the history of art, examination of the body in relation to the space occupied and the complexities of self-portraiture. While her life and career were short, her distinct body of work reveals her quick and impressive evolution as a photographer with varying influences from Surrealism to Conceptualism and Post-minimal art.

The photographs that Woodman made in Providence while a student at the Rhode Island School of Design illustrate the beginnings of the many ideas and practices that she would more fully realize while studying abroad in Rome in 1977-1978. While the present lot offers one of the most straight forward self-portraits that we have of Woodman- it also alludes to her interest in the transient nature of the figure in space. Here, the mimicking of the fabric on her dress and on the wall behind her create a sense that her body is caught between two planes- neither in the foreground nor the background but hovering in the space between. This is a visual concept that she will take even further in her later works as her nude figure literally fades against the textured walls of her surroundings.