Martin Schoeller is a renowned contemporary portrait photographer, celebrated for his distinctive close-up style that captures raw human expression and challenges traditional notions of celebrity. After developing his signature ‘big head’ portrait technique, characterized by hyper-detailed close-ups, during his tenure as an assistant to Annie Leibovitz from 1993 to 1996, Martin Schoeller embarked on a distinguished career in portrait photography. Venturing into freelancing in 1996, his street portraits quickly garnered acclaim and were published in leading magazines including Rolling Stone, GQ, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, and W. A pivotal moment arrived in 1999 when he joined Richard Avedon as a contributing portrait photographer for The New Yorker, a significant role he has maintained since, applying his meticulous scrutiny to subjects ranging from the highly famous to the unfamous.

That same year, he collaborated with Witness to Innocence on a project photographing death row exonerees, which was featured in National Geographic. Most recently, in 2024, Schoeller received an Emmy for Lighting Design for his contributions to the ‘Power to the Patients’ video campaigns, and his documentary ‘WE ALL BLEED RED’ debuted at Doc NYC. His work is permanently held in the collection of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, and he is slated to be honored with the prestigious Lucie Award for Achievement in Portraiture in 2025, further cementing his legacy in contemporary photography.