Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In
National Portrait Gallery, London. 21 March - 16 June 2024
Photographers Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron are two of the most influential women in the history of photography. They lived a century apart – Cameron working in the UK and Sri Lanka from the 1860s, and Woodman in America and Italy from the 1970s. Both women explored portraiture beyond its ability to record appearance – using their own creativity and imagination to suggest notions of beauty, symbolism, transformation and storytelling. Showcasing more than 160 rare vintage prints, Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In spans the career of both artists – and suggests new ways to look at their work, and the way photographic portraiture was created in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Please visit NPG's website to learn more about the exhibition and the exhibition catalogue with essays by curator Magdalene Keaney, WFF Collections Curator Katarina Jerinic, and historian & writer Helen Ennis.
Press and Publications
Reviews of the exhibition by: Sean O'Hagan, Alastair Sooke, Hettie Judah, Isabelle Young, Charlotte Jansen, Jo Lawson-Tancred, Katie Tobin, Ben Luke, Sarah Watling, Eliza Goodpasture, Sarah Hyde, Ted Loos, Stephen Frailey, and Emily LaBarge.
Reviews of the exhibition by: Sean O'Hagan, Alastair Sooke, Hettie Judah, Isabelle Young, Charlotte Jansen, Jo Lawson-Tancred, Katie Tobin, Ben Luke, Sarah Watling, Eliza Goodpasture, Sarah Hyde, Ted Loos, Stephen Frailey, and Emily LaBarge.
Reviews of the exhibition by: Sean O'Hagan, Alastair Sooke, Hettie Judah, Isabelle Young, Charlotte Jansen, Jo Lawson-Tancred, Katie Tobin, Ben Luke, Sarah Watling, Eliza Goodpasture, Sarah Hyde, Ted Loos, Stephen Frailey, and Emily LaBarge.
Reviews of the exhibition by: Sean O'Hagan, Alastair Sooke, Hettie Judah, Isabelle Young, Charlotte Jansen, Jo Lawson-Tancred, Katie Tobin, Ben Luke, Sarah Watling, Eliza Goodpasture, Sarah Hyde, Ted Loos, Stephen Frailey, and Emily LaBarge.
Reviews of the exhibition by: Sean O'Hagan, Alastair Sooke, Hettie Judah, Isabelle Young, Charlotte Jansen, Jo Lawson-Tancred, Katie Tobin, Ben Luke, Sarah Watling, Eliza Goodpasture, Sarah Hyde, Ted Loos, Stephen Frailey, and Emily LaBarge.
Reviews of the exhibition by: Sean O'Hagan, Alastair Sooke, Hettie Judah, Isabelle Young, Charlotte Jansen, Jo Lawson-Tancred, Katie Tobin, Ben Luke, Sarah Watling, Eliza Goodpasture, Sarah Hyde, Ted Loos, Stephen Frailey, and Emily LaBarge.
Videos
In this video, Chris Kraus, the American critic and writer, talks through Francesca Woodman's artistic process.
In this video, Drew Sawyer, the Brooklyn Museum's Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Curator, discusses Woodman's historical references and artistic affinities among her and her peers.
In this video, Ann Gabhart, Woodman Family Foundation Board member, former Director of the Wellesley College Museum, and curator of Woodman’s first solo museum exhibition at Wellesley and Hunter Colleges in 1986, reflects on her early experiences with and impressions of Woodman’s work.
In this video, Isolde Brielmaier, Deputy Director of the New Museum and the Curator-at-Large at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York, shares her thoughts on Woodman’s use of the body and the nude in her highly crafted photographs.
In this video, Kevin Moore, a New York based curator and writer, on Woodman's Victorian aesthetic, identity exploration and the artist's role in her artistic narrative.
In this video, Elisabeth Sussman, the Curator and Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art, contextualizes Woodman's work within the framework of its era.
In this video, Sabina Mirri, Italian artist and close friend of Woodman, shares her memories and impressions of Woodman as a singular, compelling young woman and artist during her time in Rome.
In this video, Rosalind Krauss, art critic and theorist and Columbia University professor, discusses her initial responses to Woodman’s photographs when co-curating the retrospective exhibition at Hunter and Wellesley Colleges in 1986. She advocates for the formal power and intelligence of Woodman’s work, then and still today.
Backstories
Additional images and materials from Woodman’s archive which shed light on her process and elaborate on specific works in the exhibition.
Additional images and materials from Woodman’s archive which shed light on her process and elaborate on specific works in the exhibition.
Additional images and materials from Woodman’s archive which shed light on her process and elaborate on specific works in the exhibition.
Additional images and materials from Woodman’s archive which shed light on her process and elaborate on specific works in the exhibition.
Additional images and materials from Woodman’s archive which shed light on her process and elaborate on specific works in the exhibition.
Additional images and materials from Woodman’s archive which shed light on her process and elaborate on specific works in the exhibition.