When I discovered the photographs of Linda Troeller
I was impressed by their symbolic character. I knew that photography is
not the medium which reflects reality more credibly than any other media
and that it is not less subjective than any other medium of the creative
arts. In Linda Troeller's photographs it is immediately obvious that their
meanings are only partially to be found in that which they represent and
are spread out to a large extent in a metaphorical space of significance.
Linda Troeller shows in her photographs that the
marriage between man and water, man diving into the water to find relief
and cure. It is not true that Linda Troeller takes her photos under water,
but numerous close-up pictures let you forget the border between air and
water: the human being unites with the water in such a manner that he is
swallowed up by it. Or he rises shadowy within vapours of hot water, as
if materialized from the state of dissolution into another state of vague
corporeity.
Linda Troeller often searches the close-up and
the flowing movement in such a manner that marries the human being and water
in a state of ecstasy. An element in contained therein, which I would like
to call shamelessness, an element which has never appeared otherwise in
photos of bathing people; shame and reservation have been removed, the security
of knowing that the ecstasy is drawing to a close, and has been surrounded.
Colors and shapes of the photos assume the expression of oceanic drunkenness:
the light breaks quicksilver on the water surfaces, bodies light up in fiery
red orange; bodies materialize slowly in the flowing surface of the photograph.
Linda Troeller's desire to express herself is concentrated
on health resorts in the entire world; but it would be wrong to call her
a collector: the names of the places where her pictures were taken are of
minor importance and are secondary to the generality of her attitude. In
her photos of water, she has discovered a picture of human experience which
is "organic, blurred, warm, comfortable, mysterious, holistic and emergent".
Dr. Wolfgang Becker, Director, Ludwig Forum fur International
Kunst
Aachen, Germany
LindaTroeller can be reached at: huszar@cnct.com.
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