Eel series, Roma

Francesca Woodman's photographs are among the most personal accounts of self exploration witnessed in photography in the last thirty years. Her storied life is replete with great anguish, and yet, she was able to realize great dignity in her work. Woodman attended the Rhode Island School of Design from 1975-1979. In 1977 she won a scholarship to study in Rome for one year. The freedom she found abroad translated into the strongest work of her short career. Ever probing her relationship to her immediate surroundings, her pictures of this time took on greater immediacy. She was a liberated soul unincumbered by gender roles or stereotypes.