Due to the repression and shame imposed by patriarchy, we are still at the onset of exploration of female sexuality and eroticism. Not only does this book reveal the power, divinity, originality, and necessity of female orgasm, but by giving women agency and voice regarding their sexuality, it becomes a deeply erotic work in itself.
Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues
Linda and Marion’s first photography and story book, “The Erotic Lives of Women,” was fearless. But they never rested— their new book is about women’s orgasm – as told and shown by real women across every social strata. Frank, confrontational, and intensely gratifying.
Susie Bright, Sexpert, Author, Big Sex, Little Death: A Memoir
I firmly believe that women’s mysteries, when explored by artists will change the way the world looks and the way we look at the world. You have ALL the power; you have only to decide what to do with it.. And believe that…
Jerry Saltz, Art Critic
I admire tremendously Linda Troeller’s exploration to womens’s experience of orgasm. It’s not a subject that I feel comfortable to talk about or even explore, but her visual images speak to larger issues of how women perceive themselves; more importantly, what they want.
Karen Sinsheimer, Photography Curator, Santa Barbara Museum of Art
For nearly two decades, I have been following the work of Linda and Marion and value their search for truth and sincerity very highly. Female eroticism is the source of creation and creativity and the world needs to know more about this. Their book is a landmark in that domain and is very well done.
Dr Kenneth R. Pelletier, Clinical Professor of Medicine and Professor of Public Health
Linda Troeller’s latest photographic project takes a very important step toward greater understanding of female orgasm, particularly the fact that each woman experiences it in a unique way. The stories by Marion Schneider that accompany the insightful portraits in the Intimacies series further reveal the complexities of orgasm and sexual experience for women.
Catherine Johnson-Roehr, Curator of Art, Artifacts, and Photographs The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction
There are very few people who, in our pornified society, can visually capture and eroticize the female and feminine body without objectifying it. In her photographs, Linda Troeller captures the confidence, strength, and power in women’s erotic lives. And she does so without the usual trite and cliché images of feminine vulnerability and modesty and without the masculine gaze. Linda Troeller’s subjects, the women she photographs, come alive in her work as just that. Desiring and desirable subjects rather than sexual objects.
Mimi Schippers, Associate Professor and Director Women’s Studies Program, Tulane University
Not only according to Wilhelm Reich’s theory of orgastic potency the orgastic energy is a still widely idle but great resource for human health and development. A post-conventional and integral consciousness-view reveals a trans-moral and potential-orientated understanding of this existential energy source. Orgastic consciousness has being a high aim of leading consciousness-researches through all the ages and cultures – whether to the love-mystics in east and west or to the tantric practitioners or to the maithuna-yogis.
From a higher perspective the sexual orgasm can be seen as a symbol for an ultimately integral-being-orgasm that integrates all dimensions and all energy-centers (charkas) of the human being and leads to escalating peak experiences of an integral-orgastic consciousness.
Unfolding the orgastic potency is an adventurous endeavor for integral growth and of course there we have to unvarnishedly face the challenges of sexuality and sexual practices to deal with, wisely utilize, master and further expand these energies. The orgasm and the orgasm ability is an interesting and important subject to newly look at and I wish Linda and Marion all the best for their artistic and post-taboo approach to innovatively bringing up the issue of the (female) orgasm.
Andreas Mascha
In the knowing that this secret of pure pleasure brings us all closer to the unification of loves grace. When the man inside experiences the woman and the woman inside experiences the man. The world is experienced without prejudice or malice … so through the orgasmic whole experience the unification of bliss is permanent and love prevails.
Cris, UK
I am deeply impressed by your book entitled “Orgasm.” I haven’t read all of the interviews yet, but I am deeply touched by the subtle texts and the photographs. It feels like an expedition into the versatility of our own sex. Women and men alike should be able to communicate freely about this, so that people can attain a better understanding of themselves and others.
There is sex without intimacy or closeness, and there is also intimacy and closeness without sex – even with perfect strangers. That is created by this book. A gift!
Monika Elisa Schurr