FRANCESCA WOODMAN PHOTOGRAPHED BY GEORGE LANGE
MAY 18-31, 2020
(To see our video interview with George Lange CLICK HERE)
In our next online Viewing Room of Covid postponed shows, we’re presenting a selection of George Lange’s photographs of Francesca Woodman taken when they were students and friends at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). A visual dialog between two remarkably talented young photographers, Lange’s photographs of Woodman are both a celebration of youthful creativity and a premonition of the importance Woodman’s pictures would have in their exploration of self-portraiture, female subjectivity, and the expressive power of photography.
A counterpoint to the view of Woodman understandably imposed by her suicide at the age of 22, Lange’s pictures of Woodman have a charm and an energy and the unusual combination of one photographer photographing another. (Usually we see photographers photographing painters, actors, and musicians but not other photographers.) Kept virtually untouched in a box for close to forty years along with a selection of prints and ephemera that Woodman gifted to Lange, the work was exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver last year in a show titled “Portrait of a Reputation”. (A book of the same name was also published by Rizzoli.) Not just a view of the student as artist (or artist as student), the photographs are a portrait of a friendship.
Lange, who went on to be a highly acclaimed editorial photographer, clearly saw that Woodman had the makings of a star and his pictures are imbued with an appreciation of her talent and a premonition of her significance as an artist. By turns objective, intimate, and amused and aware of the mess that was Woodman’s personal and creative environment – Lange’s photographs shine a light on both sides of the camera in engagingly composed and recorded images.
In conjunction with this Viewing Room, we have created a short video in which Lange talks about the pictures and his friendship with Woodman. To view the video click here