National Geographic

Hunter-Gatherers And Hollywood Celebrities: A Photographer's Unbiased Eye

December 3, 200910:15 AM ET

Claire O'Neill

Samay, a Hadza hunter-gatherer (Martin Schoeller/National Geographic) hide caption

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It doesn't matter if you're Jack Nicholson or a hunter-gatherer in remote Tanzania. If you're sitting for Martin Schoeller, you'll be photographed in exactly the same way: up-close, beneath big, bright lights, and on film.

Martin Schoeller photographs hunter-gatherers in Tanzania in the same way that he photographs celebrities: up-close, with a focus on the eyes. This young Hadza girl was photographed for a December National Geographic feature.

All photos by Martin Schoeller
Schoeller still photographs exclusively with film. His portraits of celebrities are instantly recognizable, such as this photograph of Britney Spears. He always positions the eyes in the same plane, so when flipping through a series of portraits quickly, there is an illusion of one morphing face.
In addition to portraiture, Schoeller has done a large amount of documentary work. The National Geographic feature on the Hadza in Tanzania features not only portraits, but also unforgettable scenes like this one.
Similar to the Hadza series in National Geographic, Schoeller photographed the Piraha, a remote Amazonian tribe in Brazil, for The New Yorker in 2007.
He says he considers himself part historian. "Hollywood will pretty much still be the same ... 100 years from now," Schoeller said on the phone. "The idea of capturing something that will vanish ... that's a big part of my excitement."
One of the main challenges a portrait photographer faces is putting subjects at ease. Schoeller manages to make all of his subjects feel comfortable, which shows in their faces and eyes. The notoriously aggressive soccer player Zinedine Zidane seems to reveal some calm in his expression.
A Hadza boy named Kapala carries a kudu head back to camp for a feast. Schoeller spent a month in the bush for this National Geographic feature, and a large majority of that time was devoted to building relationships so that the Hadza would feel comfortable in front of the camera.
Far from Hollywood glamour and studio lights, Shoeller photographed this Amazonian Piraha tribesman named Tooi (left) and Dan Everett, a linguist and former missionary who has lived among the Piraha in Brazil.
Xopi is a member of the Piraha tribe, a hunter-gatherer society in Brazil with a population that now numbers in the low hundreds.
The Hadza are among the last functioning hunter-gatherer societies in Africa, with a population that now numbers about 1,000. Schoeller's photographs will preserve this unique population in years to come, as they slowly merge with surrounding cultures.

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Schoeller, a renowned portraitist whose work has appeared in numerous major magazines and in museums like D.C.'s National Portrait Gallery, has a distinct style and sensibility. Although he spends much of his time doing commercial and celebrity work, he's also been commissioned for documentary projects, including a project in the December issue of National Geographic magazine. Using his "Indiana Jones instinct," as he calls it, is his preferred way to work.

Barack Obama. (Martin Schoeller) hide caption

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Last year, Schoeller spent about a month in the far-flung bush of Tanzania, equipped with two trucks of equipment, water and tents. His goal was to document and preserve the faces of the Hadza people, one of the last remaining hunter-gatherer societies in the world, with a population that now numbers about 1,000. The Hadza are not entirely unchanged by modern society, but contact with surrounding cultures has been minimal. For thousands of years, they have remained largely unchanged because of their remote and inhospitable habitat.

Read more after the jump.

"I gave them some Polaroids," Schoeller said on the phone, "and they would throw them outside minutes later, because you can't eat it, and you can't use it. They didn't even cherish their own picture."

So how do you photograph people who don't even know what it means to be photographed? A large majority of his time with the Hadza was spent not photographing, but building relationships so that he could photograph. "The hardest part," he said, "was to have them be themselves. And what you have to do with every portrait is make people feel so comfortable — and have them so well-entertained — that they forget they're being photographed ... You basically just hang out."

Making the Hadza comfortable often came at Schoeller's expense. "They have a great sense of humor," he said. "They see us being stung by thorns or afraid of bugs, or stumbling with all of our camera bags and having to drink every five minutes ... There are a lot of reasons for them to laugh." And getting them to laugh was his way of breaking the ice.

Schoeller's goal as a photographer is both historical and anthropological (artistic goals granted).

"As a photographer," he explained, "the idea of capturing something that will vanish — that's a big part of my excitement ... Hollywood will pretty much still be the same ... It's not necessarily going to go extinct." Though he's drawn to indigenous groups, Schoeller says he would not want to alter a culture that had never seen a camera. But he still gets his greatest thrill from documenting and preserving faces that might not be around in a few decades.

So Schoeller is a historian — as well as an egalitarian. He will photograph anyone and everyone in the same way, which has resulted in a collection of portraits that puts dramatically different faces on the same plane. Yes, he's photographed Britney Spears. But he'll put her right next to Holo, a Hadza woman. Schoeller has an elaborate studio setup, but he's not afraid to get down and dirty in the desert. View the rest of his Hadza portraits and documentary photographs on ngm.org, and learn more about the Hadza in the article.

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