Troy Schooneman
Opulent, visionary, and emotionally evocative are just some of the adjectives used to describe the beautiful fine art portraits of Australian artist Troy Schooneman.
His intense, melancholy yet highly romantic portraits of young men from ethnically diverse backgrounds are frequently mistaken for paintings rather than contemporary fine art photographs. Schooneman’s portraits, which are influenced by many of the master painters of the Renaissance, possess a timeless quality and are exquisitely sensual - luminous with rich, saturated colors and infused with an almost surreal painterly quality.
His portraits 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 young 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 portraits.
Current day photographer Troy Schooneman, has carried on the tradition. of creating a soft beautiful, almost Renaissance feel to lighting his subjects of hard edged Muay Thai boxers, a perfect contrast in subject and technique. Schooneman, who goes by the pseudonym iconic19 for his photography work, captures elegant portraits of the men practicing the ravaging Thai sport, donning athletic shorts, boxing gloves and little else. Yet despite the macho brutality of the sport that binds these subjects together, Schooneman's portraits display something else quite entirely. Soft and sensitive, the men reveal a side to themselves in sharp contrast to the sport in which they play.
Schooneman told the Huffington Post, "In my portraits I hope to uncover the profound beauty created by juxtaposing the strength, courage and physical presence of these fighters with emotions that they often hide from view - such as loneliness, fear, uncertainty, and sadness. I wanted to create simple yet distinctive portraits of the fighters who bring to life the discordant emotions that the spectator often experiences when viewing the sport. I find great beauty in sadness and this is something that is not always easy to explain to the fighters that sit for my portraits. I never ask them to smile. Instead, during my photo shoots I play rather sad music and encourage them to recall times in their lives that they have faced difficulties. I do this in an attempt to evoke emotions, expressions and glances that I would otherwise never see."
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The Photography of Troy Schooneman
