Last week, Slate’s Heather Murphy wrote a piece examining the Francesca Woodman Retrospective at the Guggenheim.
I love photography, I love any examination of it in the mainstream. Woodman was a photographer who happened to take her life at the age of 22. A tragic loss–and a career ended far too young, admittedly.
But I winced when I saw the headline “Is Francesca Woodman the Sylvia Plath of Photography?” I am trying to find another word, but the word that keeps popping in my head is “offended”. Just because you are talented and recognized for a talent in public (two elements which Plath and Woodman share) does not mean that the choice of suicide makes Woodman the Plath of her chosen art. The comparison is not only lazy, it insults both creative talents.
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