Her Glass Skin: Photography and the Sense of Touch

Abstract

Cathryn Vasseleu writes of the exquisite tactility of light via an evocation of sensations such as penetration, dazzlement, ecstasy and pain. This concept, encountered early in my candidacy, became something of a technical guide to the operation of my camera, a methodology for practice-led research through which the sensuous qualities of light might inform the making of a photograph.

Such close attention to the exquisite nature of light altered also my processes of observation. By attending to the behavior of light in the photography of Francesca Woodman and the materiality of her imagery, my research finds that Woodman’s photography taps into a significant moment in the history of contemporary studio glass and the early years of the renowned Pilchuck Glass School. This aspect of Woodman’s practice, which is absent from the immense body of literature concerned with her photography, calls for a deeper reading informed by theories of light that may be shared equally between the materiality of both glass and photography.

The photographic works that are the outcomes of my studio research take this finding as a point of departure, deepening my exploration into the iconography of Woodman’s imagery by passing through Michael Fried’s kaleidoscopic readings of Caravaggio’s paintings, representations of the body and grace in Ancient Roman and Renaissance art and feminist theory. In this way my studio practice shifted from subjects of the sublime and of landscape, spiraling tightly inwards before coming to rest in a poetic re-configuration of self-portraiture. Show more