“It is a request for recognition of the human being among the labels that best represents the importance of combating prejudice and isolation.  And it is this message that gives the TB-AIDS Diary its impact.”

-Brenda Reed, The Photo Review, Vol. 13, No. 2, Spring 1990

 

Troeller is rather like a modern-day Goya, transcending demographics and statistics and documenting the painful stigma and suffering of AIDS-infected people in the ‘90s, much as the Spanish artist chronicled the savage atrocities of war in an eyewitness series of etching, “The Disasters of War, “ 1810-13.”

-Cathy Viksjo, The Trenton Times, September 7, 1991

 

 “Linda Troeller’s TB-AIDS Diary is an affecting narrative that will move and inform any view/reader.

-Vince Alletti, “Choices”, Village Voice, January 1992

 

This show, “Taboo: Bodies Talk” including works by Linda Troeller, is about healing.  The body becomes a means for processing and exploring issues on illness, sexuality, and gender.  Questions are raised: What is normal?  What is natural?  It is not a definitive answer that is important but the process of finding a personal truth.

-Shari Caroline Diamond, Gallery 494, January 9-26, 1992

 

These are collaged over black and white photos of a model sitting beneath a strong sunlamp (a treatment for TB).  Her starkly illuminated frame eerily suggests the transparency of the X-rays that also forms part of the collages.  The tone of this first section of the piece lies somewhere in between Anne Frank’s diary and Duane Michal’s recent series of quaint photo-stories.

-Windy City Times, Thursday, December 20, 1990

 

A transformative image has power to bring on well-being or it’s desire, but is predicated upon reconnecting the viewer to “oneness” or “a source.”  International photographer Sebastiao Salgado makes photographs of the plight of the desperately ill in refugee camps.  Salgado’s black and white photos are mystical, encoded by atmosphere and light yet educate the public on disability and environmental toxins.  The pictures show doctors, injuries, and a scarred region.  Such photographs empowered in an art style have the ability to “dream forward” the “subject” for the viewers and transport them to a response or to a goal.

-Photography and Healing Lecture by Linda Troeller, Stockton College of New Jersey, Spring 2000

 

Healing art reflects current concerns with body and spirituality.  The artists, including Linda Troeller, in the show are unified by the belief that art is life affirming.

-Rachel Rosenthal Lafo, Senior Curator “Body & Soul Exhibition” Decordova Museum, Boston, 1992