Linda K. Alpern

Image courtesy of Mark Segal

Linda K. Alpern was born June 14, 1951, in Long Beach, New York, and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A registered nurse, Linda’s self-taught and widely acclaimed photography career spans 25 years.

Her work appears in three permanent collections: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York, and The Parrish Museum, Watermill, New York, where she often participates in group shows. In 2003, Linda was an Artist-in-Residence in Italy at the American Academy of Rome.

In 2005, she entered one photograph in a Guild Hall competition that showcased a variety of art forms and was declared “Best In Any Medium” by Guggenheim Museum curator Tracey Bashkoff. Linda was rewarded with a one-woman show of 65 photographs. The “mostly-portraits” selection highlighted silver gelatin black-and-white prints, and assorted color Inkjet images.

A contemporary review by Robert Long in the East Hampton Star compares Linda’s work to that of numerous prominent photographers. He praises her creativity and likens her distortive use of reflective Mylar to that of the late “great and eccentric” Ukraine-born Austrian American photographer, Weegee. “Ms. Alpern,” Long says, “has a fondness for funhouse images. The artist Chuck Close, floating on his back,” (seen in one of Linda’s popular photos) “seems to be wearing a life mask, for only the front portion of his face breaks the surface and is sharply focused, while the rest of his head, underwater, seems unreal.”

Long comments further on Linda’s photographs from Rome: “Ms. Alpern does as the Romans once did — the Italian filmmakers of the new wave, that is, and their colleagues in the Magnum School of Photojournalism.” Long praises Linda as “a photographer who not only has produced enough first-rate work to fill a gallery, but who leaves us wanting more.”