Fine Art Photography | Portraits by Troy Schooneman
Schooneman’s highly intense and often melancholy portraits of young male athletes from ethnically diverse backgrounds – frequently mistaken for paintings or drawings rather than contemporary photographs – are redolent in many respects of the works of Italian and other artists of the Renaissance. Schooneman’s work is exquisitely sensual, luminous with rich, saturated colors and infused with an almost surreal painterly quality.
His exquisite male portraits, which possess a dream-like atemporal quality, take us on a journey beyond mere masculine beauty and allow us a glimpse of the profound elegance created by juxtaposing the strength and physical presence of his virile male subjects with the themes of vulnerability, uncertainty, and sadness – emotions that society often demands men hide from public view. Schooneman has captured this elegance with great subtlety and we are often left transfixed by the seemingly endless contradictions created by his beautiful portraits.