Linda Troeller - Photograph

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.

Tarrah Krajnack, Self-Portrait as Weston with Light Meter/ with Test Charis Wilson on Darkroom2 Cover, 1978/2020, from Master Rituals II: Weston’s Nudes (TBW Books, 2022)

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).

Cover of Midlife, Elinor Carucci (Monacelli Press, 2019)

Favorite photo book?
Midlife, Elinor Carucci (Monacelli Press, 2019).

David LaChapelle, 1 Samuel 18:1: the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David and Jonathan loved him as his own soul, 2021. © David LaChapelle, courtesy Fotografiska

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.

Hiroya, Fish and Eggs. Image courtesy Linda Troeller

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.

Photo Books

Best of 2016

BY Vince Aletti, December 16, 2016

Formed in 1963 by 11 photographers who recognized the necessity of “a forum to address the underrepresentation of African Americans in their field,” the Kamoinge Workshop gave its members a sense of solidarity and support in a period when black Americans were the frequent subject of mainstream media coverage but rarely its author.

Feature

Roe Ethridge: It's Personal

BY Lyle Rexer, November 1, 2016

At a time when youth and age seem to be blending i...

Interview

Rosamond Purcell’s Cabinet of Curiosities

BY Lyle Rexer, September 29, 2022

On the occasion of her first retrospective at the Addison Gallery, the photographer speaks to Lyle Rexer about photographing natural-history specimens in the “kingdom of the dead.”