This season, Christie’s is offering a selection of rare, lifetime prints by Francesca Woodman. Her brief yet profound career centers around her time at the Rhode Island School of Design, including the year she spent abroad in Rome, and her time after college living in New York City. Woodman’s experimental, performative approach to portraiture – often portraying her subjects blurred, fragmented, or even merging with their surroundings – interrogates issues of identity, embodiment, and representation. Although largely unrecognized during her lifetime, Woodman’s photographs have exerted a profound posthumous influence for their introspective and psychologically charged exploration of the self.

The present lot portrays Woodman’s masterful ability in manipulating formal elements through movement and exposure. Much of the artist’s work was staged in the interiors of decrepit, partially-collapsed buildings that naturally add an eeriness to the subject matter. Here, Woodman partially obstructs her body with the peeling wallpaper from the wall behind her, physically and psychologically becoming one with her chosen decaying environment.