Martin Schoeller
[Photographer, b. 1968, Munich, Germany, lives in New York.]
Get off your phones and computers—they don’t take good pictures…. Original ideas come from experiences and the people around you.
I think all photographs lie. They capture such a small amount of a person’s personality, if they capture anything.
I think all photographs lie, but some more than others.
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.
Being a photographer is a job, it’s work. These days, everyone is a photographer. It’s important to be different, original.
My goal is to represent all my subjects on a level democratic platform that invites comparison. Where the viewer’s ideas of beauty and fame are challenged.
Like most portrait photographers, I aim to record the instant the subject is not thinking about being photographed, striving to get beyond the practiced facial performance, reaching for something unplanned. While trying to be as objective as possible, I acknowledge that every gesture is still an act of artifice.
