Martin Schoeller and Acumen Highlight Solutions for Global Poverty

A global nonprofit, Acumen invests in organizations that deliver affordable goods and services to improve the lives of the poor, as well as in emerging leaders on the front lines of creating positive change in their communities. First established in 2001, CEO and Founder Jacqueline Novogratz has built a powerful network through Acumen of more than 108 social enterprises in countries including Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Pakistan, India, Colombia, and the United States. Together, these companies have brought basic services like affordable education, health care, clean water, energy and sanitation to more than 200 million people.

“Before Esoko, we used to have very little. We didn’t know how to prepare the land. We didn’t know when to expect the rains, so our harvest was little. There were times when we went hungry," reflects Dorcas Kanini, one of Acumen's constituents. Age 59 and a mother of eight, Kanini is a customer of Esoko who utilizes the information and communication service for agricultural markets in Africa to help increase yields and profits as well as business solutions. "Now, after learning from Esoko, our farms have food. We are not struggling or starving. You can tell the difference between my farm and my neighbor’s. I am very happy and excited about the opportunity Esoko has given me and my family."  

The impact of Acumen's partnership with Esoko has brought a distinct improvement in the livelihood and access to market information for nearly 1 million farmers, accoridng to the charity's website. "Now, after learning from Esoko, our farms have food. We are not struggling or starving. You can tell the difference between my farm and my neighbor’s. I am very happy and excited about the opportunity Esoko has given me and my family."Acumen's investment offers both an immediate social impact of brining smallholder farmers like Dorcas, as well as a long-term platform with the potential to deeply impact how information is dsiceminated and the overall efficency for constituents throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. "I tell my children ‘Something new and good is happening here. Progress is taking place,” explains Dorcas

In May 2016, Martin Schoeller traveled to the field to meet Acumen’s customers to give voice and visibility to some of the poorest communities in the world. Using his iconic austere yet gripping style of photography, Schoeller created up close and personal portraits of Acumen’s customers, pushing audiences to see the poor as individual human beings while simultaneously changing the visual narrative of how “the poor” are depicted. These portraits bring forth the inner and outer beauty and dignity of his subjects. This unique series coincided with #SeePeople, a campaign aimed to change the way the world sees the poor and how poverty is portrayed. #SeePeople was launched in conjunction with the UN’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, with activations across New York City and around the world on social media.

Martin Schoeller (German, b. 1968) is an award-winning portrait photographer renowned for extreme close up portraits. Familiar faces are treated with the same levels of scrutiny as the un-famous. The unknown and the too-well-known meet on a level platform that enables comparison, where a viewer’s existing notions of celebrity, value, and honesty are challenged. Growing up in Germany, he was deeply influenced by August Sander’s countless portraits of the poor, the working class, and the bourgeoisie, as well as by Bernd and Hilla Becher, who spawned a school known as the Becher-Schüler. Schoeller’s close-up portraits emphasize, in equal measure, the facial features, both studied and unstudied, of his subjects—world leaders and indigenous groups, movie stars and the homeless, athletes and artists—leveling them in an inherently democratic fashion.

Schoeller’s work gained recognition for its strong visual impact and since 1998, his work has appeared in Rolling Stone, National Geographic, TIME, GQ, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, and The New York Times Magazine, among other publications. Schoeller joined Richard Avedon as a contributing portrait photographer at the New Yorker in 1999. His portraits are exhibited and collected internationally, including in several solo exhibitions in Europe and the United States and are included in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Schoeller’s sixth monograph “Close” is being published by Steidl this May and coincides with a new traveling museum exhibition opening at the Netherlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam.

"Faces Of Change" will be on view at UNIX Gallery from March 8 through April 20, 2018.  UNIX Gallery is located at 532 W. 24th Street, New York, NY 10011.