Martin Schoeller
by Joachim Gauck
Survivors. Faces of Life after the Holocaust presents confronting images of 75 Holocaust survivors from Israel by Martin Schoeller. Photographed in cooperation with the World Holocaust Remembrance Center Yad Vashem, the portraits mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on 27 January 1945.These compelling pictures capture the weathered faces of Jewish men and women who witnessed and endured the atrocities of the Holocaust, allowing viewers to discern their struggles and exceptional physical and spiritual resilience. Presented close-up and larger-than-life, every feature of Martin Schoeller's subjects provides us with a piece of personal and collective history: their faces observe us, their gazes hold us. The lines they bear evidence horrors endured, as well as the triumph of their survival and building their lives anew. Survivors offers a portal to the vast legacy of the Holocaust victims—both those who survived, and those who did not—and is an attempt to preserve the incomprehensible for generations to come.We don't know these people, but we can thank the artist who portrayed them. He recognized what is special about them and visualized it for us so that we can enter into a dialogue—both with them and with ourselves. Joachim Gauck
Hardcover
English
Brand New
Author Biography
Born in 1968, Martin Schoeller is one of the world's preeminent contemporary portrait photographers. He is best known for his extreme close-up portraits, in which familiar faces are treated with the same scrutiny as unknown and unfamiliar ones. Whether world leaders, indigenous groups, movie stars, the homeless, athletes or artists, Schoeller levels his subjects in an inherently democratic fashion. After studying at the Lette Verein in Berlin, in the mid-1990s he moved to New York where he began his career; Schoeller has since contributed to National Geographic, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Time magazine and the New York Times Magazine, among other publications. Schoeller exhibits internationally and his photography is held in collections including the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. Steidl has published Schoeller's Close (2018).
Review
[Schoeller's] images are all made in the same unflinching style, which accentuates minuscule details of individual expressions. He describes this as the "purest form of portraiture," in which the viewer is challenged to read the faces without the benefit of cues from the subject's environment. In this series, his subjects are the lives and faces of those who survived.--Jeffrey Henson Scales "New York Times"
Long Description
Haunting images of 75 Israeli Holocaust survivors by renowned portrait photographer Martin Schoeller Marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on 27 January 1945, these portraits by New York-based photographer Martin Schoeller (born 1968) were photographed in cooperation with Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. Schoeller's compelling images capture the weathered faces of Jewish men and women who lived through and witnessed the atrocities of the Holocaust, and allow viewers to look into their eyes for traces of the experiences they endured and to be inspired by their resilience and remarkable strength of spirit. Targets of baseless anguish and suffering simply because they were Jewish, their lives were forever altered during the dark years of the Holocaust. Each photograph offers a portal to the vast legacy of the victims and the survivors.
Review Quote
[Schoeller's] images are all made in the same unflinching style, which accentuates minuscule details of individual expressions. He describes this as the "purest form of portraiture," in which the viewer is challenged to read the faces without the benefit of cues from the subject's environment. In this series, his subjects are the lives and faces of those who survived.
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