Schoeller says, With Female Bodybuilders [the book], 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.
Art it may be, but these pictures are not doing female bodybuilding any favours. The women stare blankly back at the viewer, one of Schoeller’s hallmarks, and the fact that they are in contest shape and look drawn and exhausted is accentuated by another of his hallmarks, harsh, unforgiving light.
Hardly a representation of female muscle that is going to win over the sceptics. Don’t blame the photographer, he has his own aims. But, as a Schoeller antidote, Female Muscle Slave would like to present other portraits and self-portraits of muscular women.
And I can be arty too, you know.
Slave says, My aim was to show how female muscle and beauty are not mutually exclusive, even in mainstream terms, and have juxtaposed the beauty of the women with the negative comments from articles on the Schoeller photos to demonstrate the falsehood of preconceptions about women with muscles being unattractive and masculine.
Heather Lee : Tatiana Butler : Gal Ferreira
They all look so ugly, like an old leather couch.
Diana Tinnelle : Rebekah Kresila : Christina Steele
Horrendously disgusting. Abhorrent. Yuk!
Elena Shportun : Andrea Giacomi
Looks like a bunch of men with girly hair and make-up on.
Cinderella Landholt
Ugliest women in the world!
Helene Ahlson : Mary Ann Graves : Christy Resendes
The stuff of nightmares.
Katka Kyptova : Virginia Sanchez Masias
There are better looking gargoyles on Hereford Cathedral.
Heidi Vuorela
Grotesque! Freaks! Gross!
Geraldine Morgan : Dawn Sutherland
They look like Iggy Pop.
The recent article on Schoeller’s work was in the Daily Mail online. You can also check out Schoeller’s work here, and to buy the book of female bodybuilder portraits go here.
Enjoy!
Some of the comments under the Mail article are quite harsh. I shouldn't have expected anything less though coming from the faceless opinionators of the web. I do go mainly for a softer looking face myself when it comes to admiring female muscle but I can see a kind of intense beauty in the angles, lines and shape of the the women. It is good to try and tune your mind to the positives and the interesting aspects of all sorts of faces and bodies because after all we are nature ans nature is fantastical and stunning
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