Close presents 120 portraits of the world's most famous and influential people across the arts
and entertainment industries politics business and sport-from Julia Roberts and Adele to
Frank Gehry and Marina Abramovic Barack Obama Julian Assange and Roger Federer. Between 2005
and 2018 Schoeller photographed his subjects in his words to create a level platform where a
viewer's existing notions of celebrity values and honesty are challenged. Schoeller realized
this goal by subjecting his sitters to equal technical treatment: each portrait is a close-up
of a face with the same camera angle and lighting. The expressions are consistently neutral
serious yet relaxed in an attempt to tease out his subjects' differences and capture moments
that felt intimate unposed. Schoeller's inspiration for Close was the water tower series of
Bernd and Hilla Becher his ambition to adapt their systematic approach to portraiture. Amidst
Schoeller's famous subjects are also some unknown and unfamiliar ones a means to
comprehensively make his project an informal anthropological study of the faces of our time.
