maria article image

Photo wins Review Award for best website and posting

Linda Troeller embodies Maria’s experience within this sexually evocative photograph, which was chosen as a judges favorite in the ‘Women’s Erotic Art Exhibition 2014’. She has captured Maria’s sensual feeling of paintbrushes on her body as she creates her own unique journey to Orgasm. The shot is close-up filling the whole of one’s field of view; so much so that Maria’s head disappears above us. This leaves us with the feeling that we are almost there sharing Maria’s experience.

Maria, Colombia BY LINDA TROELLER
Maria, Colombia BY LINDA TROELLER

This image is part of a series of photographs and interviews undertaken with the ethnographer Marion Schneider entitled Orgasm: involving women of different ages, nationalities, cultural and sexual backgrounds.

I was touched by Linda’s sensitive way of working with these women, accomplished in the approach that she used to gain their trust and confidence before being photographed: for example, she used the experience of shopping with Maria as a fait accompli before the photographic shoot. I believe it is this down-to-earth approach that set the scene for Maria to pose in such an empowering and celebratory way.

As a Psychotherapist I understand the experience of Orgasm as one where we are in absolute contact with ourselves; a place where our internal mind simultaneously links to the here-and-now physical bodily feeling; resulting in a completeness within oneself.

Linda breaks all the taboos around sexuality that should never have been there in the first place; she puts women back in the driving seat. Helene Williams is a practising Art Psychotherapist alongside being an artist. www.helenewilliams.com