'Am I in the Picture? Am I Getting in or out of It?'
WOODMAN, Francesca. Some Disordered Interior Geometries. Philadelphia: Synapse/Visual Arts Press. 1981.
4to. Loose in the original pale pink printed wrappers after those of Esercizi graduati di geometria (see below), housed in a custom-made grey cloth box; pp. [24]; partially unopened, margins preserving printer’s crop marks; short closed tear to first leaf at head (part of unopened conjugate pair), slight marginal creasing to uncut leaves; else very good; ownership inscription ‘This is my publisher’s proof copy Suzanne Reese Horvitz’ to p. 1.
Publisher’s proof copy of the only artist’s book by American photographer Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) to be published during her lifetime, issued mere days before her suicide at the age of twenty-two, our copy inscribed by her publisher, the American artist Suzanne Reese Horvitz.
Woodman, fluent in Italian, spent a year studying in Rome (1977–1978), where she picked up a copy of this nineteenth-century Italian geometry exercise book, Esercizi graduati di geometria, at the Surrealist bookshop Maldoror and began using it as a notebook, adding in her own photographs and manuscript text. Of this process of repurposing, she wrote ‘I’ve always printed small but the photos seemed less precious and more personal when in the books… The books started to influence the work—I made my own geometries for the geometry book’ (Woodman Family Foundation, online). The anastatic copy of the notebook became Some Disordered Interior Geometries, Woodman’s only publication during her lifetime. Several of the five hundred printed copies are thought to have been distributed at her funeral, when her work was still largely unknown.
Woodman’s evocative photos feature the artist as subject, using ‘long shutter speed and double exposure when photographing so that she could actively feature in her own work. This also meant that she could capture different stages of movement, in a way that could trace the pattern of time. As a result, her image is blurred, which suggests motion and urgency’ (Tate), writing of her technique ‘Am I in the picture? I could be a ghost, an animal or a dead body, not just this girl standing on the corner’. Some Disordered Interior Geometries was perhaps Woodman’s answer to André Breton’s Nadja (1928), one of the most iconic works of the French Surrealist movement. In 1979, Woodman wrote ‘I would like words to be to my photographs what the photographs are to the text in Breton’s Nadja. He picks out all the allusions and enigmatic details of some rather ordinary unmysterious snapshots and elaborates them into a story. I’d like my photographs to condense experience’.
Provenance: With the ownership inscription of Suzanne Reese Horvitz, co-founder of the Synapse Press (publishers of the present work) in 1980.
SKU: 2120865