UNTITLED

“We’re very instinctive about the face,” says Max Kozloff, author of “The Theatre of the Face: Portrait Photography Since 1900.” “It’s only when a subject is in hailing or conversational range that it begins to feel like a portrait. When it gets closer than that, it verges on uncomfortable.”

No one knows that better than Martin Schoeller. Last year, the New York-based photographer revealed a series of portraits that transformed the famous into typographical landscapes, where the viewer could feel an intimacy that only “lovers and dentists could be privy to,” says Kozloff.

That applies equally well to Schoeller’s latest body of work, which opens today at Ace Gallery Beverly Hills (through April). Five years in the making, the show concentrates on nearly two dozen female bodybuilders, all of whom proudly admit to taking steroids. The results, needless to say, are staggering. With 72-by-90-inch prints and 8-by-10-inch color negatives, Schoeller’s images reveal every ripple, crevice and pore with alarming clarity. These woman aren’t bodybuilders per se, they’re bio-engineers toying with postgenderism. “They represent what’s going on in culture at large,” says Schoeller. “Because it’s no longer acceptable to simply be good at a sport. Now you have to take everything to the absolute extreme.”

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