Francesca Woodman – reviews of 'irresistible' photo show

What you need to know

A new exhibition of the work of cult American photographer Francesca Woodman, titled Zigzag, has just opened at the Victoria Miro gallery in Mayfair. Woodman received acclaim posthumously for her large body of ethereal black and white photos. She used female models and was also the subject of her own photographs, which were produced before her suicide in 1981 aged just 22.

The show focuses on the influences of abstract art in Woodman's photography including her use of zigzags and other geometrical forms in her compositions. Her images range from the female form, to landscape, architectural structures and interiors. Zigzag runs until 4 October.

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What the critics like

It's refreshing to see an exhibition that strips all the baggage about Woodman and puts the focus back on her photographs, says Diane Smyth in the Daily Telegraph. There's such humour, combined with her modest and beautifully composed photography: "this show is a revelation which proves, at last, what all the fuss was about".

Woodman was singularly talented and her work is "irresistible, alarming, beautiful and perpetually mysterious", says Sue Steward in the Evening Standard. The unabashed nudity in these images never exudes eroticism but plays with the sculptural shapes emerging from her angular limbs and body.

Her significance is perhaps partly explained not only by the unprecedented growth of narcissistic self-absorption, but also the questioning and even despairing tenor of our times, says Marina Vaizey on the Arts Desk. But this exhibition, by concentrating on the semi-hidden geometric motifs and careful composition of her images, "makes her both a more approachable and more considerable artist than hitherto".

What they don't like

One criticism is that two prints exhibited in the gallery's window are set back from the street and are therefore "a little hard to see", says Diane Smyth in the Daily Telegraph. It's a particular shame as they include Small Sketch for a Piece about Bridges and Tiaras, which matches feats of engineering with crowning glories to ludicrous comic effect. ​