This collection of photographs began as a reference to comparing, contrasting, and noticing things about my identity and my unfolding aging.
The self-portrait is a composition of structured forces and aspects of our developed knowledge of life. It is a guide toward "Who am I?" After years of taking my pictures, I found that my identity is neither uniform nor fixed. I am involved in challenges and shifts and influence of the marked important issues of this decade.
For me the click of the shutter is a kind of reassurance, a behavioral modification signal triggering “more living is on its way.” In this time of my 7th decade my perceptions resonate with our culture and my photographs encourage women to be more recognized by their families, governments, and provided new realms of opportunity.
When I was twenty years old, I was at Georgia O’Keeffe’s luncheon she hosted for the Ghost Ranch Conference Center summer drama students. I had lost my part in a play due to a sore throat and the director gave me his Rollei camera to take pictures of the cast. Georgia saw me with it and sent me to wander through the arroyos to “let the powers out there guide you.” That occurrence influenced an early self-portrait and me to return to WVU to change my major to photography. It is important to note, there was only one photo class in Journalism, and so I was forced to change my major to learn what the great Prof. Ash had to teach me in the J-school.
After my M.S. and M.F.A. at Syracuse University I explored memory, TB and AIDS, water, women, sexuality, and community. My images call on private, subjective sensation in an often atmospheric and intimate style. These photographs are seen through my eyes from a time in photography I believe we might not wish to lose track of. All my published books have at least one self-portrait in them.
The self-portrait is a composition of structured forces and aspects of our developed knowledge of life. It is a guide toward "Who am I?" Working with the psyche is much more than narcissistic exercise, though it can fulfill that role, too. I experimented with 'presenting' myself to the camera to gain possession of powerful self-hood. When I see a print or screen image of myself, it is something real, something physical, and something that increases awareness and mindfulness. Though many people now catch the unique power of the self in selfies, my evocative and emotional thought-out images still present a layer of observation in this work that adds a vital layer of reflection, experimentation, camera work, and depth to the collective new trend.
August 22 - September 22, 2023
Linda Troeller’s art projects focus on self-portraits, women's and social issues. She made the Chelsea Hotel her base for 20 years, curating an exhibition for the 125th Anniversary, “Chelsea Hotel Through the Eyes of Photographers,” and publishing a monograph, “Chelsea Hotel Atmosphere – An Artist’s Memoir,” 2007 and a new book, “Living in the Chelsea Hotel, Schiffer Publishing, 2015 that won the International Photo Award, 2016.
She had a major exhibition at Leica Gallery, Los Angeles, Ilon Art Gallery, Harlem, 2018 and Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC and Museum of Sex, NYC. Aperture published her Pictures of the Year award winning images in “Healing Waters,” exhibited at their Burden Gallery, NYC and powerhouse Books published her next book, ‘Spa Journeys,” 2004. Her book, “Erotic Lives of Women,” Scalo, Zurich, 1998 was reviewed as one of the “most gutsy and imaginative books of the decade,” NY Times. The exhibition opened at Fotohof Gallery, Salzburg traveling to Berlin and Weimar, Germany. Her second book on women, Orgasm, Daylight, 2014 was introduced at the Filter Photography Festival and is in major libraries from Kinsey to Harvard to National Museum of Women in the Arts.
She received a New Jersey Arts Grant and the Woman of Achievement Award from Douglass College, in 1991 for her TB-AIDS DIARY, a series of photo-collages in Color Polaroid that helped prevent discriminative stamping of HIV in passports. It was exhibited at Fotofest, Houston and over fifty galleries and covered in the Asbury Park Press and Trenton Times to European Photography Magazine. The set of 19 prints was recently acquired by the Norton Museum of Art permanent collection, West Palm Beach, Florida.
She photographed three Fashion Catalogues for the Apolda Museum, Germany and exhibited “Apolda Fashion, 2005” at Centro Colombo Gallery, Medellin in 2006. She returned to Colombia to teach self-portraiture to women in poverty in 2010 for the University of Antioquia. She has an ongoing series of self-portraits, “Self-Reflection.” She has lectured at School of Visual Arts, NYU, Parsons, Yale, Salzburg Summer Art Academy, New Orleans Photo Alliance, Ryerson University, Toronto and was a professor of photography at Stockton College of New Jersey, Indiana University, and Bournemouth College, England. She has a MFA, School of Art, and MS, Newhouse School, Syracuse University and BS from Reed School of Journalism, West Virginia University. She was an assistant at the 1974 Ansel Adams Workshops for Ralph Gibson and in 1987 for Annie Leibovitz and David Hockney.
Her photographs are in corporate and private collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, American Express, Johnson > Johnson, Library of Congress and is in archives such as Special Collections Bird Library, Syracuse University. She graduated from Toms River High School, which named her to their Hall of Fame, and resides in New York City and New Jersey.