Classic and previously unpublished photographs and archival materials by a pioneering talent in staged photography, with a new essay by Chris Kraus.
 
 
 
This elegant volume presents more than forty vintage photographs by groundbreaking American photographer Francesca Woodman (1958–1981), many never previously seen. Spanning her creative life, they explore the thought processes, interests and influences that inspired her work.
 
Organised thematically, Alternate Stories highlights previously unexplored relationships, drawing deeply on Woodman's formative years in Providence, Rhode Island, and Italy, with unpublished photographs and archival materials.
 
In the newly commissioned essay “Impure Alchemy”, critic and novelist Chris Kraus explores Woodman's life through her work, using diaries and letters as primary sources and examining the technical means and literary strategies that animate it.
 
The volume reveals Woodman's lasting influence on generations of artists through images that, as Kraus writes, continue to “inspire new mysteries and questions”.