Martin H. M. Schreiber
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In February 1979, a reserved young woman arrived at Martin H.M. Schreiber's New York studio to model for his photography class. She introduced herself simply as a dancer. Her name was Madonna Ciccone, and she had come to the city the year before from Michigan with a one way ticket and thirty five dollars to her name. Life modelling was a way to make ends meet, and neither photographer nor model could have guessed that these images would become some of the most sought after portraits in music history.
Madonna Nudes 1979 gathers the black and white photographs from that session, capturing the future icon before fame, poised and entirely self possessed in the tradition of the classical figure study. The work drew international attention in 1985, when the images appeared in Playboy just as Madonna was becoming a global star. Schreiber, born in Prague in 1946 and later a teacher at the School of Visual Arts and Parsons, approached the shoot as a pure celebration of the human form.
More than a portrait of a celebrity, the series stands as a tribute to the quiet discipline of the figure model, and to an artist on the threshold of history.