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Woodman, Francesca (Artist/Photographer); Sollers, Philippe; Levi-Strauss, David & Others : Francesca Woodman: The First Scalo Edition

Scalo Publishers, Zurich, Berlin, New York, 1998

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in Fine Dust Jacket. 160 pages. Exhibition Monograph. One of the best books on the photographic art of Francesca Woodman. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only, simultaneously with the Fondation Cartier French-Language Edition. The Scalo Edition is in English. The First Edition is now rare. An austerely elegant production by Larry Kazal: Oversize-volume format. Beige cloth boards with titles embossed on cover and spine, as issued. Photographs by Francesca Woodman. Essays by Philippe Sollers, David Levi-Strauss, Elizabeth Janus, and Sloan Rankin. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated (for the plates) and uncoated (for the text) stock papers in Paris, France to the highest standards. The reproduction quality is exemplary in every respect. In pictorial DJ, which utilizes "Space", and titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Published on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition held at the Fondation Cartier Pour L'Art Contemporain in 1998. Presents "Francesca Woodman". The prodigy-photographer's sublime art. This turn-of-the-century remembrance is timely because Woodman's work is an implicit indictment of our time: Her nudes and self-portraits are explicit, brutal, even painful to watch because they are the anguished baring of her soul, in contrast to the narcissistic exhibitionism so pervasive today. Using a blurring technique, she often obscured and effaced her face, her body, her self, thereby becoming a paradox: An apparition who is an indelible presence. "Becoming" is the theme of all her work: woman becomes Woman, real becomes Real, being becomes Being, concrete becomes Abstract, personal becomes Universal. Uncompromising and self-contained, her work has not prevented major Movements (such as feminism and identity art/politics) from adopting Woodman as one of its patron saints. Her canonical status is rivalled only by Diane Arbus, with whom she had nothing in common aesthetically. Indeed, the difference between the two tough-minded yet vulnerable artists is revealing: Arbus rejected our (in her words) "false" and "materialistic" world to embrace another, marginalized one (freak shows, mental institutions, nudist colonies). Their objective existence, the result of an intimacy between photographer and subject, turned the rest of us into onlooker-outsiders. Woodman withdrew from our world altogether, leaving the rest of us behind. Almost all of her photographs were shot in her claustrophobic studio (and when outdoors, she turned the latter into her studio's extension), an intimate, privileged space without a temporal dimension. Some of her photographs, like the Cover Image, are simply titled "Space": Woodman needed her own space, literally and psychologically, more than anything else, to create her art. A child prodigy, she found her calling early in life, when most people haven't the slightest clue what they want to do with theirs (she made her first images when she was 13). Then, a devastating, permanent silence: She committed suicide at the age of 22, on January 19, 1981, by throwing herself out of the window, in a final act of "blurring", "obscuring", and self-effacement. An absolute "must-have" title for Francesca Woodman collectors. This title is an art photography classic. This is one of few copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. Please note: Copies available online command as much as $400. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare copy thus. 101 plates. One of the most brilliant artist/photographers of the 20th century. A fine collectible copy. .

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