Martin Schoeller was born in Munich in 1968. Growing up in Germany, he was deeply influenced by August Sander's numerous portraits of the working classes and the bourgeoisie, as well as by the photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher, who spawned a school known as the Becher-Schüler. Schoeller worked as an assistant to Annie Leibovitz from 1993 to 1996. He continued to advance as a freelance photographer, producing portraits of people he met on the streets. His work gained recognition for its strong visual impact and has been feautred in Rolling Stone, GQ, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, and W, among other publications since 1998. Schoeller joined Richard Avedon as a contributing portrait photographer at The New Yorker in 1999. There, he continues to produce his award-winning images. His portraits are exhibited and collected internationally, including in several solo exhibitions in Europe and the U.

S. and are included in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Martin Schoeller lives and works in New York City.