Matthias Schaller was born in Dillingen, Germany, in 1965. Beginning in 2000 with his photographic study of Andreas Gursky's studio, Schaller has focused almost exclusively on people-less interiors. Whether photographing photographers' and architects' studios (series Werkbildnis I and II), Cardinals' desks of the Roman Curia in the Vatican (Purple Desk), Venetian interiors on the Grand Canal (Controfacciata), 150 Italian opera houses (Fratelli d'Italia), artists' palettes (Das Meisterstück), original astronaut suits (Disportraits), or the architecture of Oscar Niemeyer (As Curvas), Schaller's series or sequences engage with the spirit of objects and place and convey the notion that the marks we leave, the objects used, or the environment inhabited says as much about the selected individual as their physical presence. All his different works follow this strategy of indirect portraiture.