Martin Schoeller on Intimate Portraiture
Martin Schoeller on Intimate PortraitureMartin Schoeller is known for his distinctive, close-up portraits. He says that this style of portraiture makes it all about the person and removes unnecessary distractions such as clothes, environment, or background. Click here to learn more about Martin Schoeller and his work.

Martin Schoeller on Intimate Portraiture

September 17, 2013
2 min read

“Photographing things the same way and then building a platform … invites people to compare, that enables the viewer to look at eyes in a different way.”
—Martin Schoeller

Twin sisters Eva and Johanna Gill
Twin sisters Eva, left, and Johanna Gill, from the January 2012 National Geographic story “A Thing or Two About Twins”

Martin Schoeller is known for his distinctive, close-up portraits. He says that this style of portraiture makes it all about the person and removes unnecessary distractions such as clothes, environment, or background. Though his concept of portraiture is simple, he has taken complex and intimate photographs of people from around the world. Schoeller’s portraits of the Hadza people in Tanzania and of numerous sets of twins have appeared in National Geographic magazine. Schoeller was an assistant to photographer Annie Leibovitz and worked alongside Richard Avedon at the New Yorker.—Caitlin Kleiboer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This video portrait was produced by National Geographic magazine in partnership with the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. It is part of an ongoing series of conversations with the photographers of the magazine, exploring the power of photography and why this life of imagemaking suits them so well. Learn more about the making of the series and watch the full trailer here.

Follow Martin Schoeller on his website.

VIDEO PRODUCTION CREDITS
Photographer: Martin Schoeller
Producers: Pamela Chen, NGM
Chad A. Stevens, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Associate Producer: Elyse Lipman, NGM
Editor: Mika Chance, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Camera and Sound: Spencer Millsap, NGM, Shannon Sanders, NGM

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