Jeff Koons,
rendered in white with golden eyes and a flower crown; a platinum blond Lil’
Kim caught off-guard, clad in a tiny pink ruffled bikini; Sean Combs painting
his own portrait with nude assistants—these are some of the iconic, cutting,
and often candid portraits that German photographer
has become known for. Gracing the covers and pages of
The New Yorker,
TIME, and
Fortune, among other prominent publications, over the
past two decades Schoeller has captured the vitality and significance of his
famed sitters. While it may not be possible to capture a person’s essence with
the click of the camera, Schoeller’s images are as close as it gets—and this
month, some of his most defining works are considered together in a
retrospective exhibition at New York’s
Hasted Kraeutler.
Titled “
Martin Schoeller: Portraits,” the
exhibition is a photographic record of some of the world’s most famous figures,
seen as only Schoeller can reveal them. Actor George Clooney (the book’s cover
star) offers a hint of a smile behind the mask of his own eyes, and athlete
Tony Hawk skateboards across his family’s kitchen island; each work portrays a
story that only a skilled photographer can convey. The show coincides with a major
new monograph,
Portraits, which features a foreword from Jeff Koons.
In order to
create these unexpected images of some of the most photographed people in the
world, Schoeller takes image after image until he catches his subjects off
guard, revealing aspect of themselves not usually seen. He seeks out those
universally identifiable moments that convey meaning beyond class and culture.
While the artist
is probably best known for his in-your-face medium-format portraits, lit so the
eyes sparkle just so, the exhibition looks toward different aspects of the
photographer’s practice, with portraits of all different types, from stark to
staged, with many taken for magazines. Together they form a portrait of their
own, one of a photographer with a sense of humor and deep sensitivity to those
indescribable, impossible-to-capture things that make us human.