Looking for Francesca Woodman’s Voice featuring Amy Love Tomasso (Part I)

10/13/23 • 22 min

“Francesca once wrote that she wanted to write her autobiography. I hope that by writing the definitive narrative of her life, Francesca will finally have this desire fulfilled, and the world can know her as she was: multifaceted, on fire about life and art, and solare.” Amy Love Tomasso

Warning: This episode discusses suicide.

In this week’s episode my special guest, Amy Love Tomasso, and I delve into the life and work of the iconic photographer Francesca Woodman. More specifically, we talk about her relationship with Italy. Amy first discovered the artist as a young college student studying abroad at Cornell’s Art, Architecture & Urban Planning Program in Rome. Since then, she has been on a mission to locate Francesca Woodman’s voice and speak her truth. As Amy says, “I believe that her formative year in Rome has not been adequately explored in the literature (at least not in English). The correspondences contained in Giuseppe’s 2011 exhibit and accompanying catalog Francesca Stern Woodman Roma 1977-1981 are an important window into Francesca’s animus, and inspirations during her time in Italy, that have not been widely introduced to an audience beyond Italy. So much of Francesca’s truth, as well as her rigorous artistic foundation, is contained in her time in Rome.”

Further Reading and Links

Amy Love Tommaso’s Biography

Amy Tomasso grew up in a large Italian-American family in central Connecticut. When Latin was cut from her high school’s budget, she taught herself Italian at age 15 using her father’s college textbook and honed her speaking skills that year with the first of many visits to her relatives in Italy’s Abruzzo region. On this formative trip to Italy, Amy fell in love with the piazza, the quintessential Italian public space, which led her to major in Urban Studies and minor in Italian at Stanford University. While studying urbanism and photography abroad in Rome her junior year, Amy was introduced to the work of the photographer Francesca Woodman, who would become a central research and writing subject. Amy went on to receive her MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where she continued researching and chronicling Woodman’s life, artistic contributions, and time in Italy. A lover of storytelling and community, Amy currently works for the Vermont Department of Housing & Community Development and works on her creative writing by night. In her free time, Amy is an avid triathlete, traveler, and Italophile. She plans to return to Italy to complete her book project about Francesca Woodman next year.

Francesca Woodman’s Official Biography (The Woodman Foundation)

https://woodmanfoundation.org/francesca/biography

The Woodman Foundation

https://woodmanfoundation.org/

The Tate’s Finding Francesca

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/francesca-woodman-10512/finding-francesca

Francesca Woodman’s Biography (Gagosian)

https://gagosian.com/artists/francesca-woodman/

Francesca Stern Woodman Roma 1977-1981: Exhibit at Il Museo del Louvre

https://www.ilmuseodellouvre.com/2011/05/23/francesca-woodman-photographs-1977-1981/

Public Collections

https://woodmanfoundation.org/francesca/public