Michael Schmidt (photographer)

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Michael Schmidt (born October 6, 1945 in Berlin ; † May 24, 2014 there ) was a German photographer . His work is represented in collections of national and international museums.

Life

Michael Schmidt taught at the Berlin adult education centers in Kreuzberg and Neukölln from 1969 to 1976 . In 1976 he founded the “Workshop for Photography” at the Volkshochschule Kreuzberg, which existed for ten years. Classes, lectures, artist talks, workshops and exhibitions by Robert Adams , Diane Arbus , Lewis Baltz , Larry Clark , John Gossage, William Eggleston , Larry Fink, Frank Gohlke and Lisette Model took place there. Schmidt headed the workshop from 1976 to 1977. Among his students there were Ulrich Görlich , Wilmar Koenig, Thomas Leuner and Wolfgang Eilmes . In 1979/1980 Michael Schmidt had a teaching position at the comprehensive university in Essen. There Andreas Gursky is one of his students, who called him his most important teacher. In 1988 Schmidt was visiting professor at the International Summer Academy for Fine Arts in Salzburg .

In his work, Michael Schmidt primarily dealt with his immediate surroundings, the Berlin districts of Wedding and Kreuzberg. With Waffenruhe (1987), which draws a psychogram of the divided city at the end of the Cold War , Schmidt broke away from a strictly documentary conception of images. In the following groups of works he also formulated a subjectively justified idea of ​​the world using the stylistic devices of documentary photography. 1988 showed Museum of Modern Art in New York Ceasefire ( Ceasefire ) in the group exhibition New photography 4 .

Michael Schmidt resolved the close-knit concentration on the motifs of his native Berlin with the series Ein-unit (1996), in which he examined the visual language of various forms of society and political systems on the occasion of the reunification of Germany . In it he used re-photographed images that were already medially conveyed, which he treated his own motifs equally and published with them in a textless artist's book. This work premiered in 1996 under its English title U-NI-TY at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where it was the first solo exhibition by a German photographer in decades.

Michael Schmidt's grave in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery

In Frauen (2000), Schmidt showed with his views of naked women the social norms of a younger generation, which can often only be read in detail. In Somewhere he examined the German province and described "the loss of home as a place of identity".

In 1995 Michael Schmidt had his first overview exhibition at the Museum Folkwang , Essen, with “Photographs since 1965” . The extensive overview exhibition “Gray as Color. Photographs until 2009 ”he realized in 2010 at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. In 2006 and 2010 he took part in the Berlin Biennale and in 2013 in the 55th Venice Biennale . There he presented his group of works food , in which he deals with contemporary food production and also used color photography in his work for the first time.

Michael Schmidt had been a member of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin since 1999 . Immediately before his death, he was awarded the Prix Pictet for the food exhibition , which was shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Schmidt lived in Berlin-Kreuzberg and in Schnackenburg an der Elbe, Lower Saxony. His grave is in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof in Berlin. The “Foundation for Photography and Media Art with Archive Michael Schmidt” has existed since 1999 and has been running and processing its archive since the artist's death. The foundation under civil law with legal capacity was founded by Schmidt, the German Savings Banks and Giro Association and the Norddeutsche Landesbank .

Exhibitions (selection)

Solo exhibitions

Participation in exhibitions

  • 1977: Michael Schmidt and pupils , workshop for photography at VHS Kreuzberg, Berlin
  • 1978: Aspects of German Landscape Photography, Photo Museum in the City Museum, Munich
  • 1979: In Germany , Rheinisches Landesmuseum , Bonn
  • 1980: Photography 1919–1979 - Made in Germany , Photo Museum in the City Museum, Munich
  • 1981: Photographies en Allmagne 1920–1982 , Association Art et Photographie, Besançon (Sixième festival photographique)
  • 1982: Works 1981 , workshop for photography at VHS Kreuzberg, Berlin
  • 1983: Photography in Germany: Today (traveling exhibition) including Koninklijke Akademie voor Schone Kunsten, Gent
  • 1983: Photography 1983 , Fotoforum Stadtpark, Graz
  • 1985: The photographic self-portrait , Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart
  • 1986: Remnants of the authentic , Folkwang Museum, Essen
  • 1987: Photo Biennale , Goethe-Institut, Nancy
  • 1988: Eisenerz industrial region , Ostbahnhof, Graz
  • 1988: New Photography 4 , Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • 1989: Photography now , Victoria and Albert Museum, London
  • 1989: Art as Photography - Photography as Art , Berlinische Galerie, Berlin
  • 1989: Photography Until Now , The Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • 1990: The Past and the Present of Photography , Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
  • 1991: Interferences: Art from West Berlin 1960–1990 , Riga Art Gallery and St. Petersburg Art Museum
  • 1993: Industrial photography today , State Gallery of Modern Art, Neue Pinakothek, Munich
  • 1993: Pictures from a real world , Lillehammer Art Museum
  • 1994: Industrial photography today (Het Siemens Photo Project) Nederlands Fotoinstituut, Rotterdam
  • 1995: Close to Life , 3rd International Photo Triennial, Esslingen
  • 2000: How you look at it - Photographs of the 20th Century , Sprengel Museum Hannover
  • 2003/2004: Cruel and Tender - Photography and the Real , Museum Ludwig , Cologne
  • 2004: Every photograph is an image , Pinakothek der Moderne , Munich
  • 2006: Of Mice and Men , 4th Berlin Biennale
  • 2010: what is waiting outside , 6th Berlin Biennale for contemporary art
  • 2011: Photography Calling , Sprengel Museum Hannover
  • 2012: MAKING HISTORY , MMK Museum for Modern Art, Frankfurt am Main
  • 2013: Expansion of the combat zone. The collection. 1968–2000 , Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin
  • 2013: The Encyclopedic Palace - Il Palazzo Enciclopedico , 55th Venice Biennale - Giardini Arsenale
  • 2014: Prix ​​Pictet: Consumption , Victoria and Albert Museum, London
  • 2014: Conflict, Time, Photography , Tate Modern, London
  • 2015: Conflict, Time, Photography , Galerie Neue Meister, Albertinum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
  • 2015: Conflict, Time, Photography , Museum Folkwang, Essen
  • 2016: Workshop for Photography 1976–1986 : The rebellious image , Museum Folkwang, Essen; And suddenly this vastness , Sprengel Museum Hannover; Kreuzberg - America , C / O Berlin

Publications

  • Berlin Kreuzberg. District Office Kreuzberg, Berlin 1973.
  • Berlin, urban landscape and people. Stapp Verlag, Berlin 1978.
  • Berlin-Wedding. Galerie and Verlag A. Nagel, Berlin 1978, ISBN 3-9800057-1-2 .
  • Berlin-Kreuzberg. Cityscapes. Public Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-89087-001-5 .
  • City landscapes 1981. Folkwang Museum, Essen 1981.
  • Disadvantaged. Senator for Health, Social Affairs and Family, Berlin 1982.
  • Pictures 1979–1986. Spectrum photo gallery in the Sprengel Museum Hannover 1987.
  • Truce. Dirk Nishen Verlag, Berlin 1987.
  • Unit. Scalo-Verlag, Zurich / Berlin / New York 1996, ISBN 3-931141-17-9 .
  • Landscape - self - truce - human images (excerpts). Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster 1998, ISBN 3-925047-42-5 .
  • Women. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-88375-423-4 .
  • Somewhere. Snoeck-Verlagsgesellschaft, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-936859-18-3 .
  • Berlin after 45th Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 978-3-86521-090-6 .
  • 89/90. Snoeck-Verlag, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-940953-43-8 .
  • Food. Snoeck-Verlagsgesellschaft, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-940953-93-3
  • Nature. Mack, London 2014, ISBN 9781907946585

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Academy of Arts
  2. ↑ a b Berlin photographer: Michael Schmidt died. (No longer available online.) In: Monopol . May 24, 2014, archived from the original on April 2, 2015 ; accessed on March 20, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.monopol-magazin.de
  3. ↑ ( http://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1602?locale=en )
  4. ↑ Photography is a bastard art - An interview with Michael Schmidt by Dietmar Elger. In: Michael Schmidt, Somewhere. Snoeck Verlagsgesellschaft, Cologne 2005, p. 122.
  5. ↑ Every picture a shock. In: Tagesspiegel from May 26, 2014.
  6. ^ Gray as color , exhibition at Haus der Kunst in Munich, 2010
  7. ↑ food , exhibition at the Museum Morsbroich, 2012

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schmidt, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer
DATE OF BIRTH October 6, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH May 24, 2014
Place of death Berlin