Who is Linda Wolf?

I started this Substack thinking it would be all about My Life as a Rock ‘n Roll Photographer, but in writing stories about that decade, I realized I had so much more to share about the other four decades of my documentary photography, and what I’m focused on now, so I needed to take the limitations off and free myself!

Photographing people and nature, self-portraits and nudes included, as well as writing helps me figure out who I am (plural). get to know myself from a distance! I hope any insights I glean and share will help you figure yourselves out as well!

Autobiography is bitchin’! I love it. It helps me not feel so alone and I hope it helps you the same way, as well. We are all deeply interconnected in the web of life, more alike than different, yet uniquely ourselves.

I will still share photos of rock stars and give my insiders view, but that will not be all! Joe Cocker, Leon Russell, Fanny, Little Feat, Jackson Browne, Patti Smith — sure but also photos from my early years in Los Angeles, and my twenties when in England, Italy and the South of France where I lived. I long to share these stories. For example, I used to take the London tube in any direction as far as it would go, then get out and explore who lived there. You’ll see! Also, in the 1970s, I lived in villages in the Vaucluse over five years — as a student, a girl-friend, a nanny, and just another villager - and photographed everything, pretty much everyday.

I became a photographer in the early 1960s when as a young teenager I saw the great photography book, The Family of Man, edited by Edward Steichen, and heard the folk songs of Bob Dylan - Hollis Brown, Masters of War, Maggie’s Farm. It gives me the chills just thinking about those songs; how they mirrored what I felt. I was seeking ways to express myself and to react to a world that felt so wrong. I was hungry to find my people, people who understood the emotions I felt. I found them in the music scene. I was sixteen. I hitchhiked to Hollywood. I dropped acid. I made love. Life changed.

My father gave me a camera and my mother, a pen. I moved in with the first all-girl rock band, Fanny. I reinforced myself through the women’s liberation movement, interviewing and photographing women artists like Kate Millet. I protested to end the war in Vietnam. I found a way to belong and be useful, not just sit around watching the guys play music. I became a photographer. To this day, I have stayed true to the same longing to find myself through these unifying ways. Nature is my God. website

Love, Linda

PS

Please comment. I want to hear from you. Don’t hold back. Let it rip! No judgment. I will respond to you whenever I can.