Michael Schmidt. Corner, Müllerstrasse and Seestrasse. 1976-78. Gelatin silver print, printed 1998, 7 15/16 × 10 7/8" (20.2 × 27.7 cm). Gift of the artist. © 2023 Estate of Michael Schmidt.

“I’m not a documentarist. I’m a realist.”

Michael Schmidt

Michael Schmidt was born in Berlin in 1945 after the end of World War II, and his work would remain inextricably linked to an exploration of his city’s social context. Between 1949 and 1955, he moved to East Germany twice, but escaped back to West Berlin before the Wall was erected in 1961. A self-taught photographer, he began taking pictures in 1965, when he was 20 years old. In 1976, he cofounded the Werkstatt für Photographie (Workshop for Photography) at the Volkhoschschule (Adult Education Center), a school that played a critical role in Berlin becoming a transatlantic forum of exchange between European and American photographers.

Schmidt’s landmark photographic projects in MoMA’s collection—Berlin-Wedding (1976–78), Berlin nach 1945 (Berlin after 1945) (1980), Waffenruhe (Ceasefire) (1985–87), and Ein-heit (U-ni-ty) (1991–94)—demonstrate not only his sustained interest in Berlin as a subject but also his engagement with the weight of German identity in modern history.

Ein-heit, his most ambitious project, was made in response to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent reunification of East and West Germany. It comprises 163 images: some were taken by Schmidt in a factual, descriptive style, and others he rephotographed from newspapers, propaganda journals, history books, and other communication and mass media sources. In an effort to articulate the difficulties of constructing images of historical memory in Germany, he combined contemporary and archival pictures of mass demonstrations, historic sites, emblems, monuments, and both anonymous and notorious people into a poignant study of German society in the aftermath of World War II. Drawing on the rich traditions of picture archives and the photo-essay, Schmidt presents history not as a progressive sequence of events but as a decentered, simultaneous narration. He prompts viewers to consider the limits of historical representation, leaving it up to them to determine whether a given image was taken in East or West Germany, prior to or after World War II, or during division or since reunification.

Roxana Marcoci, Senior Curator, Department of Photography, 2016

Note: Opening quote is from Kito Nedo, “Michael Schmidt Photographs the Many Layers of Berlin’s History.” Frieze, January 21, 2022. https://www.frieze.com/michael-schmidt-retrospective-hamburger-bahnhof-2021-review

Wikipedia entry
Introduction
Michael Schmidt (6 October 1945 – 24 May 2014) was a German photographer. His subjects of interest were Berlin and "the weight of German identity in modern history." In 1965 Schmidt began photographing the streets, buildings and people of West Berlin in a semi-documentary approach. He went on to make a series of "ambitious projects" there, nearly all in black and white and becoming more impressionistic, until his death in 2014. Each project was exhibited, then published as a book. In 1976, he founded the Werkstatt für Photographie (Workshop for Photography) in Berlin. U-nit-y was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1996, Frauen was shown at the Berlin Biennale in 2010 and Lebensmittel, a series about the global food industry, at the Venice Biennale in 2013. A retrospective of his work was held at Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2010. His book Waffenruhe (1987) was included in Parr and Badger's The Photobook: A History, Volume II. He died in 2014, a couple of days after winning the Prix Pictet for Lebensmittel.
Wikidata
Q1555341
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
Getty record
Nationality
German
Gender
Male
Roles
Artist, Photographer, Video Artist
Name
Michael Schmidt
Ulan
500249718
Information from Getty’s Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License

Works

5 works online

Exhibitions

Publications

  • MoMA Highlights: 375 Works from The Museum of Modern Art Flexibound, 408 pages
  • MoMA Now: Highlights from The Museum of Modern Art—Ninetieth Anniversary Edition Hardcover, 424 pages
  • Photography at MoMA: 1960 to Now Hardcover, 368 pages
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