Martin Schoeller

I was out wandering the streets one lunchtime and wandered into a... ahem...bookshop in Soho, where I found this wonderful book of Martin Schoeller's images. The book is about A3 in size with high quality printing. The books starts with a short biography of Schoeller and then goes straight into the photographs. The first set of images are from his documentary work with the New Jersey police who he shadowed for three months on the nightshift. These stark images are a huge contrast to the wonderfully polished headshots of celebrities that he took for his book Close-up a number of which appear in this book. Of all the portraits in the book, my favourites are the environmental portraits. Each portrait tells a story or has a little twist about it, Tarantino escaping from a straightjacket surrounded by doves in flight. Cesar Millan standing surrounded by leaping dogs in a street full of muddy water. Even the cover shot of Angelina Jolie licking a bleeding lip tells has a story behind it and that's just a headshot. Some of the environmental portraits are like a Gregory Crudeson on a small scale. The only thing that lets the book down is that it contains advertising but its easy enough to ignore and if it keeps the price down, that's fine by me.

Amazon has a great deal on this book and others in the Stern Portfolio range, you can pick them up for as little as £10 in the uk, unfortunately the price is not quite so good in the states, for a change. Usually rip-off Britain is double the price.