A Woman Looking at Her Looking at Me. Conflicting Identities and Gazes in the «Self-Portraits» of Francesca Woodman

This article considers the photographic work of Francesca Woodman in terms of «conflicting greatness», by investigating the different perspectives from which her photographs deal with conflictuality. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s argumentation about the origin of the work of art, this contribution will seek first to problematize the traditional feminist reception of Woodman’s work, in order to demonstrate the impossibility of circumscribing her artistic production in terms of a definite contextual label. Secondly, by way of a comparison with Cindy Sherman, this article intends to explicate the peculiar search for self staged by Woodman, her attempt to reach this knowledge which is, in the end, impossible to achieve unless in relation with an other, through a reciprocal exchange of gazes, from inside and outside.