Carmen Troesser
Carmen Troesser has worked as an editorial and commercial photographer for over two decades, which has taken her to many places to document historical moments, world leaders, professional sports, the Olympics and Arctic expeditions.
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Selected Works
Biography
Carmen Troesser has worked as an editorial and commercial photographer for over two decades, which has taken her to many places to document historical moments, world leaders, professional sports, the Olympics and Arctic expeditions. During this time, she has found herself distracted by moments on the sidelines of the action. Quiet moments that call her attention to the movement of light over surfaces or the patterns of birds in flight. She is drawn to inspect the microscopic and the expanses of everyday life and in nature. She has a bachelor’s degree in painting and Illustration and graduated with a master’s degree in photojournalism from the University of Missouri. She has won several international awards for her food and nature photography and travels for commissions from her home bases of Chicago and her family’s Missouri farm.
Artist Statement
As an artist, my journey began in the world of editorial and commercial photography, where precision and technical mastery reigned supreme. For years, I adhered to the rules and honed my craft, with my camera becoming an extension of my body. Proper exposures, perfect histograms, and exact focus were my guides, shaping how I saw and captured the world. But over time, I felt confined by these expectations, as if the very rules I had mastered were barriers to a deeper, more personal form of expression.
Now, I find myself breaking free from those constraints. I am embracing imperfections, allowing them to tell their own stories. I’ve discovered beauty in the blurred, the underexposed, and the unexpected. These once-forbidden elements have become my allies, enabling me to explore a more intuitive and emotional connection to my environment.
At the core of this shift are my sensitivity and sentimentality, traits that have always informed my art but now take center stage. The world often feels overwhelming in its complexity, and I’ve turned to nature as a refuge. I seek to simplify, to distill the chaos into moments of peace and serenity. Through the delicate rhythms and patterns of nature, I aim to create images that, even in movement, invite stillness, and in stillness, movement.