posted by guardian.co.uk on january 15th, 2012
In the 1970s, through 1980, the photographer Francesca Woodman made images of young women, most often herself, in a blurry, foggy, subliminal state. She called one famous series her ghost pictures. They were achieved through slow shutter speeds, which meant that instead of being the record of a blinked instant, they captured movement through time and mid-air: in one a female figure leans forward, body flexed, awkward, in fizzing focus, while her head shakes frantically, blurrily, as if ridding herself of a wasp. Many of the figures are almost transparent. I am here, they insist. But watch me disappear.
When Carey Mulligan was working on her latest film, Shame, she saw a documentary about the Woodman family and Francesca’s work inspired her character Sissy – a damaged, needy, tinnily upbeat young woman, whose singing act becomes her last desperate attempt to forge a relationship with her brother. When she is working on a film, says Mulligan, she often makes scrapbooks for her character. “It really is so childish. It’s like my way of saying,” – she puts on a child’s voice – “‘I’m qualified!’ … I had little Woodman pictures in the book, stuff like that.” Her voice goes quiet. “If anyone ever read them I’d be mortified because they’re just full of shit. They’re not clever and there’s nothing creative in them. It’s just me reassuring myself.”
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The Great Gatsby (2012)
Shame (2011)
Through A Glass Darkly (2011)
Drive (2011)
