Martin Schoeller: Female Bodybuilders

Schoeller’s best known works are close up portraits without the usual artifices or digital manipulations of media and fashion photography, previously exhibited at the gallery in 2006 (Close Up) and 2008 (New Work). These portraits are highly-detailed, colorful investigations of a face and the cha... Read more

Schoeller’s best known works are close up portraits without the usual artifices or digital manipulations of media and fashion photography, previously exhibited at the gallery in 2006 (Close Up) and 2008 (New Work). These portraits are highly-detailed, colorful investigations of a face and the character that animates it. The subjects are celebrities and non-celebrities, including people who live outside of western culture, exhibited on a level platform, challenging the viewer’s notions of celebrity, beauty, value and honesty. The German-born Schoeller is influenced by August Sander, the Bechers and their disciples, as he investigates intensity and closeness on the one hand and leveling and objectivity on the other. He continues their questioning of what the medium of photography can reveal about its human subjects in the present day when images of celebrities proliferate even more and digital manipulation is taken for granted.