Martin Schoeller is a portrait photographer renowned for his close-up images of famous peoples faces.
He has now turned his lens towards female bodybuilders by producing a series of images of them cropped tightly to their head and torso. The actual images are very large, nearly two metres high, and I imagine quite confronting.
Female bodybuilders are even more startling than their male counterparts because they take you by surprise. On one hand you re supposed to be attracted to them, on the other you are repulsed. They are so masculine in their appearance that it is just confusing.
In Martin Schoeller's words, "These women mirror our modern cultural hunger for size and aggression, and attention at any cost. We are in the age of Bigness. Bigger televisions, bigger automobiles, bigger wars, bigger people.
While many people push their physical limits, these women go all out, risking their lives for an ideal of female masculinity. Their insatiable appetite to embody it all may reflect our own lust for more, maybe more than we are willing to admit.
These women are not uncomfortable with the way they look, it is our discomfort we feel."
I find these images very interesting though I am still not sure what I really feel about them.
I am not convinced of Martin's explanation for these images and their intent. I don't think the way he has photographed these women really communicates what he is wanting to say.
Sure everything is bigger and faster these days but to me the metaphor is lost in the inherent stillness and sadness I see in the subjects. They may be comfortable within themselves but this is not apparent to me.
They look like weird passport photographs with women's heads attached to muscle men bodies. Even though I know these are real women and the photos are not manipulated they look 'fake'.
Maybe that is what they convey more than anything, the superficiality of much of modern western culture and the pursuit of ideals that have themselves become so twisted and distorted they no longer have any real value left.
Very confusing...
You can see a short video of Martin photographing the body builders on YouTube