Martin Schoeller : Close

Close presents 120 portraits of the world's most famous and infl uential people across the arts and entertainment industries, politics, business and sport-from Julia Roberts and Adele, to Frank Gehry and Marina Abramovic, Barack Obama, Julian Assange and Roger Federer. Between 2005 and 2018 Schoeller photographed his subjects, in his words "to create a level platform, where a viewer's existing notions of celebrity, values, and honesty are challenged."

Schoeller realized this goal by subjecting his sitters to equal technical treatment: each portrait is a close-up of a face with the same camera angle and lighting. The expressions are consistently neutral, serious yet relaxed, in an attempt to tease out his subjects' differences and capture moments "that felt intimate, unposed."

Schoeller's inspiration for Close was the water tower series of Bernd and Hilla Becher, his ambition to adapt their systematic approach to portraiture. Amidst Schoeller's famous subjects are also some unknown and unfamiliar ones, a means to comprehensively make his project an "informal anthropological study of the faces of our time."

About the Author

Born in Munich, Germany, in 1968, Martin Schoeller has become one of today's most prolific and well-known photographers. Based in New York City, Schoeller's many editorial, commercial and personal projects have yielded masterful images, widely recognized for their infamous subjects and iconic power.

Schoeller became a staff photographer for The New Yorker in 1999, joining the famed Richard Avedon. His work has also appeared in many additional magazines, including Vogue, TIME, Rolling Stone, National Geographic, GQ, and Vanity Fair, and has received awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors, Communication Arts, and the Society of Publication Designers, among other honors.

Schoeller's five books showcase a great range of the photographer's work, from a study of female bodybuilders to a compilation of Schoeller's signature "Close Up" portraits of celebrities, politicians, and unknowns. His most recent title, Portraits, is an unprecedented gathering of editorial images where the illustrious photographer's full range of expression is on display. With an impressive amount of variety and scale, Schoeller shares his signature compositional imagination alongside the wry wit that animates his work. Whether portraits of political leaders, Hollywood stars, business entrepreneurs, or contemporary music royalty, these images are as daring as they are exacting, playful and precise.