Offering readers a nuanced perception of Francesca Woodman’s work while challenging long-held psycho-biographical notions about her identity, this book provides an alternative critical enquiry that foregrounds lived experience, materiality and gender.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the study examines the complex relationship between the body and place in Woodman’s self-representational photography by combining the history of photography, gender studies, and spatial studies. The author provides a highly original visual analysis by situating Woodman’s practice within her wider cultural network, including Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, Gordon Matta-Clark, Carrie Mae Weems, and Agnes Denes. Highlighting the artist’s visual juxtapositions, the book emphasises the sociopolitical complexities of placemaking and challenges how readers think about the traditional art-historical canon.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history and photography, as well as urban, spatial, and gender studies.