Martin Schoeller received the Choose Creativity Award for Curious Photography on June 6, 2024. Martin is one of the world’s preeminent contemporary portrait photographers. His approach is ultimately about knowing the person behind the image, the curiosity to understand the stories in their eyes and expressions. He is most known for his extreme close-up portraits of celebrities, Holocaust survivors, homeless, drag queens, native tribes people, and female bodybuilders, in which familiar faces are treated with the same scrutiny as the unfamous. The stylistic consistency of this work creates a democratic platform for comparison between his subjects, challenging a viewer’s existing notions of celebrity, value and honesty.
Growing up in Germany, Martin was deeply influenced by August Sander’s countless portraits of the poor, the working class and the bourgeoisie, as well as the works of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Martin moved to New York in the mid-1990s. Producing portraits of people he met on the street, his work soon gained recognition for its strong visual impact. Since 1998 he has photographed hundreds of covers for major publications.
Martin’s print and motion work has appeared in many major advertising campaigns, notably receiving praise for his Colin Kaepernick image in Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign. This image went along to win the prestigious D&AD Black Pencil and the Outdoor Grand Prix at Cannes. Schoeller’s portraits are exhibited and collected internationally, as well as part of the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Martin lives and works in New York City.
6 июн 2024
