Francesca Woodman Event

?The truth is rarely pure and never simple.? Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

In the Victorian comedy of manners by Oscar Wilde, two of the characters pretend to be someone else: they apply another identity?namely the one of Earnest?to their own and until the end of the three-acts they play an exciting role-game, which is resolved through a surprising coincidence.

In Francesca Woodman?s work there seems to be a tripartite congruency that manifests a certain simultaneity. Three subjects are indeed present at the same time: the subject-photographer, the subject-object of the image and the subject within the frame that looks back at (acts on) the viewer. The temporality of these ?three acts? materializes on the surface of Woodman?s photographs and declares, apart from its dilation, the artist?s working process while addressing some ontological questions on photography. The triangular symbol of the eye and the problem of the gaze are recalled by the very same triad of the subjects, whose actions? diachrony is perceived synchronically by the viewer.