Martin Schoeller

Los Angeles

Martin Schoeller has earned a reputation as one of the pre-eminent portrait photographers of our time, having photographed subjects from President Barack Obama to numerous actors, musicians and sports icons, to indigenous Amazonian tribesmen and women. With characteristic intimacy, Schoeller’s hyper-detailed work presents the prominent and unknown side by side, in unequivocal terms. Consistently shooting each of his subjects in his singular crisp style, Schoeller equalizes these photographic subjects in facial close-ups. As he states: “A photographic close-up is perhaps the purest form of portraiture, creating a confrontation between the viewer and the subject that daily interaction makes impossible, or at least impolite. In a close-up, the impact stems largely from the static subject’s expression or apparent lack thereof, so the viewer is challenged to read a face without the benefit of the environmental cues we naturally use to form our inter-personal reactions.”

In 2011, when National Geographic magazine commissioned him to shoot an assignment on twins, he began what would become a year-long pursuit of the subject on an international scale, which has resulted in an expansive new body of work that is currently on show at Ace Gallery Beverly Hills and is the subject of his latest book. Presenting twins, triplets and quadruplets, his images bare nuanced comparisons; the camera capturing the subtlest differences of division from a single fertilized human egg. The odds of identical quadruplets being born are one in 11-13 million, for identical triplets, and one in 150,000. Even when separated at birth, identical twins maintain their genetic similarities. As ‘duplicated people’ they share exact copies of their genes, questioning our notions of individuality and personal uniqueness: “They embody sameness and symmetry in the human form as literally and precisely as nature permits.”

Martin Schoeller

Ace Gallery

May 4 – July 13, 2013
9430 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90212
USA

Calendar