The women perform and compete in a kind of shadow world, which is often viewed as freakish and the contestants transgendered. However, the sport isn’t about gender at all; it’s about the pursuit of the perfect body and the spirit of competition.
According to Schoeller, “With Female Bodybuilders, I am trying to show the vulnerability that I see and feel in the subjects when I am with them, to get to the complex emotions behind a mask of extreme physical expression. These women mirror our modern cultural hunger for size, aggression, and attention at any cost. We are in the age of Bigness.”
Schoeller is considered a contemporary master of portrait photography. Since 1999, The New Yorker has contracted him to capture portraits of the most recognized personalities of our time. Through this and other magazines, he has photographed President Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Tom Wolfe, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, and many others.
The book Female Bodybuilders contains sixty-three portraits and is available at Photoeye.com.
