Linda Wolf
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Linda Wolf, (born March 17, 1950) is an American-born photographer and writer, and founder of several nonprofit organizations to benefit youth. She is the daughter of poet, Barbara Wolf, and 1940's cinematographer, Joe Wolf. Her photographs are housed in museums, libraries, and private collections world-wide, including the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Le Zilvermuseum Het Sterckshof, Belgium; Le Musee Reatu, Arles; Le Musee Cantini, Marseille; the Stephen White Gallery, Los Angeles, and the Harborview Hospital Art Collection. She currently lives and teaches part time in Mexico.
Wolf attended Hollywood High School, graduating in 1968. She became a professional photographer as a teenager for the first all-girl rock band, Fanny (1969), and later an official photographer for the Joe Cocker Mad Dogs and Englishmen Tour (1970).
From 1970-1975, she lived and studied in France, attending the Institute of American Universities, and L'Ecole Experimental Photographic, taught by Jean-Pierre Sudre and Claudine Sudre. Her early photographic work in France focused on women, gypsies, and village life in the Vaucluse Mountains, the content of which is mainly between documentary photography social photojournalism and portraiture. Returning to the U.S. in 1975, Wolf taught photography through the University of California Extension.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Wolf created a number of public art projects, including "The Bus Bench Mural Projects," photographic murals of bus riders affixed to the benches upon which they wait, and "L.A. Welcomes the World," a series of large scale multicultural portraits of people on billboards, sponsored by Eastman Kodak for the 1984 Olympics. In 1981, she was a representative of the United States in Arles, France at the Rencontres International de la Photographie. Also, in 1981, NBC-TV did a special on her work.
Since 1976, Wolf has received numerous grants, awards, and donations for her photographic and human potential projects. She is currently working on a series entitled, Full Woman, a collection of documentary portraits of diverse women world-wide, supported in part through a five-year "Destiny Path" grant from the AnGel Fund of the Rudolf Steiner Foundation.
In addition to photography, Wolf has authored three books and founded two award winning nonprofit organizations: the Daughters Sisters Project(1993), and Teen Talking Circles, based in Washington State, dedicated to empowering young women and creating opportunities for youth to have a safe space to tell the truth and take action for a just, compassionate and sustainable world. Her published books include, Daughters of the Moon, Sisters of the Sun: Young Women and Mentors on the Transition to Womanhood (New Society Publishers, 1997); and Global Uprising: Confronting the Tyrannies of the 21st Century; Stories from a New Generation of Activists (New Society Publishers, 2001; and Speaking and Listening From the Heart, The Art of Facilitating Teen Talking Circles (dsistas Press, 2005).
The inspiration for both her photographic work and her social activism stems from her early participation in the Women's Liberation Movement, and the Human Potential Movement of the 1960s and 70s. She participated in workshops at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, founded by Michael Murphy and Dick Price in 1962 as an alternative educational center devoted to the exploration of what Aldous Huxley called "the world of unrealized human capacities that lies beyond the imagination." This led to a life-long friendship with Fritjof Capra, who inspired her to expand her photographic work to include writing and social activism. Her nonprofit work was also deeply influenced by the work of Riane Eisler, and third wave feminism.
[edit] Direct Action
Linda Wolf is an internationally recognized photographer and author. She is the co-author of Daughters of the Moon, Sisters of the Sun, which won the Athena Award for Excellece in Mentoring; Global Uprising: Confronting the Tyrannies of the 21st Century; and Speaking & Listening From the Heart. In 2006, she became the recipient of a five year AnJeL Fund Grant from the Rudolph Steiner Foundation.
