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For World Poverty Day, nonprofit venture capital fund Acumen debuts a series of portraits of people living on less than $5 a day–and show how the projects it’s funded are helping.
For the collaboration with Acumen, Schoeller photographed around 50 of the nearly 230 million people touched by the 102 businesses across Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and the United States that Acumen has funded.
Throughout his career, Schoeller has photographed the likes of Barack Obama, Cate Blanchett, and George Clooney. Most recently, he has been photographing homeless people he meets on the streets, and posting their images along with their stories to his Instagram account. What you notice, when scrolling through his feed, is the celebrities are indistinguishable from the homeless. “I photograph everyone in the same way,” Schoeller tells Fast Company. “Same lighting, same blank background, same framing, same camera, with the idea of treating everyone the same, no matter who they are or where they come from, and to just invite comparisons between faces.”