Now in her 70s, Linda Troeller took her first self-portrait in 1973. Since then, many of her photographs have focused on the female body and female pleasure. Her books include Healing Waters (Aperture and Marvel, 1998), The Erotic Lives of Women (Scalo Verlag 1998), and Living in the Chelsea Hotel (Schiffer Publishing, 2015). On view at the Museum of Sex through January 9, Self Power| Self Play: 50 Years of Erotic Portraiture by Linda Troeller is a survey of nearly 50 years of her portraiture, images that celebrate intimacy and disregard cultural conventions of female beauty and so-called ladylike behavior.
Troeller responded to five questions from photograph.
Name a photograph that brings you joy.
Self-Portrait as Weston with Light Meter/ with Test Charis Wilson on Darkroom2 Cover, 1978/2020, by Tarrah Krajnak, from her book Master Rituals II: Weston’s Nudes (TBW Books, 2022, book design Paul Schiek).
Favorite photo book?
Midlife, Elinor Carucci (Monacelli Press, 2019).
Last exhibition you saw?
David La Chapelle: Make Believe at Fotografiska NYC (on view through January 8, 2023).
Favorite museum?
Fashion Institute of Technology [FIT], New York. On view through December 31: Shoes: Anatomy, Identity, Magic.
Favorite work of art that’s not a photograph?
Fish and Eggs, gifted to me by the painter Hiroya when we both lived on the eighth floor of the Chelsea Hotel for 15 years. One of his paintings is now up in the recently re-opened Chelsea Hotel.