Martin Schoeller

For our festival we have decided on a theme of 'Identity or ID'. This is a pretty broad subject which allowed us some freedom when choosing a photographer. I initially thought about street photography as this an area of photography I'm very interested in and most of my favourite photographers work on the street.

However I then came across Martin Schoeller. I'd seen the work before but never really investigated the photographer behind it or really looked into the project. I was really interested to find out more and decided it would be a great start for my project so I did just that.

I have chosen to use Martin Schoeller as my photographer for this module. Our chosen theme is identity which was a challenging subject initially. I've come across Schoeller's work a few times before and I really liked it. The 'hyper close up' portraits offer an insight into the subjects on a level that is unattainable in a normal portrait. 

His portrait work has influenced my ideas and I've decided to base my work around him and his techniques. I aim to shoot a series of 6 portraits of people in the same age range in order to confirm to the theme of identity. I'm going to try and use varied subjects so I can explore the diversity within a certain age range.

I have written a 500 word piece which describes his work and would accompany the exhibition in order to provide insight into the reasons I have chosen him.

"A native of Germany, Schoeller, who now lives and works in New York, makes portraits both of well-known actors, politicians, and musicians, as well as the distinctly “un-famous” who are presented at parity, enabling us to question our notions about celebrity, personality, and likeness. Informed by his early exposure to both the celebrity portrait work of Annie Leibovitz and the formal austerity of German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher, Martin Schoeller’s photographic portraits provide a topographic and serial representation of various human faces.

These large-scale photographs, with their hyper-real detail, give us close-ups that at once decontextualize the face as they detail its landscape. As a result, each image proves a compelling visual topography and an opportunity to precisely examine the apparent complexities and contradictions of each subject. When hung en masse, Schoeller’s photographs take on a haunting prosthetic agency, as if his subjects are gazing back at the viewer while we gaze at them.

There is a desiccated, slightly stunned look to each sitter facing Martin Schoeller's camera, as if they might have just witnessed some unfortunate event, such as a car crash, or perhaps a favourite sporting team's disgrace. There faces are rendered in frightening, almost forensic detail, with sharply defined lines, skin pores, even minute scars and, of course, their glittering eyes. In each colour picture, we see clear evidence of a life's journey.

When the mantle of celebrity slips, for just a click of a shutter, in these larger-than-life portraits, the famous are exposed. Schoeller treats his celebrities equally - not just as people but also as vistas of flesh across which some emotions are seen to wander. The photographs also show the effect of time on people who have always been in the public view.

Schoeller’s portraiture brings viewers eye-to-eye with the well-known and the anonymous. His close-up style emphasizes, in equal measure, the facial features, both studied and unstudied, of his subjects—presidential candidates, movie stars and artists—leveling them in an inherently democratic fashion. Schoeller’s photographs challenge us to identify the qualities that may, under varying circumstances, either distinguish individuals or link them together, raising a critical question: What is the very nature of the categories we use to compare and contrast"