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November 6, 2010
Michael Schmidt first gained attention in 1973 with Berlin-Kreuzberg, a series of photographs of the quarter where he still lives. In Berlin Stadtbilder (Images of the City) (1976-80), Schmidt explored the architecture of the city, depicting the apartment blocks and office buildings in an austere, documentary style.
Michael Schmit, Berlin architecture
Schmidt says of his work:
I prefer black and white photography because it guarantees the viewer a maximum amount of neutrality within the limits of the medium. It reduces and neutralizes the coloured world to a finely nuanced range of greys, thus precluding an individual way of seeing (personal colour tastes) by the viewer. This means that the viewer is able to form an objective opinion about the image from a neutral standpoint independent of his subjective colour perception. He is thus not emotionally distracted.
Schmidt’s images lack all superficial attraction; they are without incident and as far removed from the photographic concept of the decisive moment as possible; they are neither striking nor narrative.
Michael Schmidt, Stadtbilder4 (Custom), Berlin, 1976-80.
His understanding of photography is that it enables us to portray reality with complete precision to the last detail. There is no other medium - apart from media which derive from the invention of photography (e.g. film and television) - which is in a position to document reality exactly as it is by means of technical process.
In book projects like “Berlin - Kreuzberg” (1973) and “Stadtlandschaften 1981” (1981) Schmidt repeatedly approached the city and time and time again made it look like a landscape. Schmidt ́s Berlin photographs, whi show the no man ́s land that came into existence during the separation of East- and West-Berlin, its wild grass and ruin-like buildings – subjects that appear to be suspended in a transhistorical state.
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