Francesa Woodman was a 22 year old photographer who, it is known or believed, committed suicide in New York by jumping from her East Village loft in 1981. In the 1970s, I was in my mid-20s and a frequent diner at Carnival Café, a collectively owned, happy, busy vegetarian restaurant where Francesca worked in Boulder, Colorado. Although my memories of some of the "Carnies" who worked there became vague, I remember Francesca through the reminder of an early photograph. I was acquainted with many of the café people including a close friend of Francesca who posed with her and later spent time with Francesca in Rome. In March of 2006, that acquaintance found me online and told me belatedly of Francesca's death. I then became interested because of my previous familiarity with Francesca and because I had, by now, been doing photography on a prolific scale for decades. I also have a longtime appreciation for the kind of photography that Francesca was doing. After learning of her death, I came to discover Francesca's photographic images on the Internet. One of these images showed the face of Francesca as I remember it and brought to life my vivid memory of her in a doorway inside the café some thirty years ago, with her gentle smile and a distinct recollection of her soft voice as well. Equally visual, long before meeting Francesca and well before Carnival Café existed, I had drempt of that doorway, and the other one just like it, in the early 1970s before anyone had decided to create either of the doorways, when it was a wall before the previous café expanded. I had patronized the first two incarnations of the veggie café, Little Kitchen and Family Table, at the same location since coming to Boulder at age 19 in 1971. And so, when a great photographer dies of suicide at such a young age, it makes an old memory of a café and it's regulars all the more hauntingly meaningful because she was among us at a time when most of us were very young. I recall that she seemed a simple woman and a gentle soul with an unforgettable smile. Subconsciously and consciously, that is probably part of the reason why art patrons have made Francesca into a study relating to her short life's work and the dark hour of her unfortunate suicide.
