When was the last time you saw a woman having a realistic-looking orgasm on screen? The orgasms we see are (mostly) either the high production, hyperbolic, screaming affairs in porn (which occur after little more than three, solid thrusts in the vagina) or in films, when actresses reach the big ‘O’ without so much as blushing or putting a hair out of place.
If you were so inclined, you could spend days trawling through film showreels and porn sites looking for a woman’s realistic looking come face and we’d hazard a guess you’d only find a few, if any. You can find porn to meet every obscure, weird and sometimes disturbing sexual kink there is out there, but try and find footage of a woman actually looking like she’s having a good time? Yeah, not so much…
It’s a problem that New York City-based photographer Linda Troeller and art director Marion Schneider are trying to remedy with their new project ‘Orgasm’.Keen to redress the fact that female pleasure is often ignored by the media and rarely mentioned in conversation, the pair set out to photograph women of all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds at the point of climax and compile the images into a book.
READ MORE: Meet The Girls Getting Paid £120 To Film Their Orgasm Face And Put It Online
The results are pretty arresting and show women in a variety of situations as they come. One woman has a cucumber in her mouth (which, admittedly, we’re not 100 per cent sure we get, but each to their own), another is seen resplendently relaxing in a pool and another woman is pictured secretly frigging herself off underneath a scarf. The come faces are all completely different and unique, but they’re united in the fact that the women actually look like they’re having real-life orgasms. It’s really bloody refreshing.
Troeller explained what she learnt from photographing women’s orgasm faces to The Debrief:
‘I learned during photographing and hearing women’s orgasm stories how much women wish to create newly cleansed, less shame-ridden lifestyles to free their body, mind and spirit. We are exposed to a host of toxic beliefs about sexual pleasure from the political to the religious sphere, so with this book Marion, the co-author, and I hope the project encourages more dialogue to reinforce functional, healthy, creative levels of personal freedom.’
Troeller believes strongly in the importance for women to write their own code on sex, even sharing that lesson with her elderly mother. ‘I convinced my mother to take a workshop on orgasm when she was 75, which she cancelled, she but did order their vibrator at my urging,’ she says. ‘She used it to satisfy and uplift her mood during her last 10 years in a nursing home suffering from Alzheimer’s until she was 89.’ If that’s not an advert for how empowering and healing knowing your own body is, we don’t know what is.
They pair hope to use the book to combat the stigma and ‘culture of shame’ that stops people from having an open dialogue about female sexual desire, which many see as potentially dangerous and something that should be quashed. Which sounds pretty sensible to us. Check out the amazing pictures below.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophiecullinane
ALL IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHT LINDA TROELLER FROM THE BOOK
BY LINDA TROELLER AND MARION SCHNEIDER
ORGASM IS PUBLISHED BY DAYLIGHT BOOKS
Orgasm is published on November 5, 2014
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.