Michael schmidt german photographer biography videos

Michael Schmidt, who just won the Prix Pictet photography prize for his epic Lebensmittel project , died on Saturday in Berlin. He was 68 years old. Schmidt was born in Berlin, the year World War 2 ended and the city was divided into two parts. Legally, the government of West Germany had almost no power over the enclave. As a consequence, West Berlin became a very strange city.

Large parts of the past were frozen in place. At the same time, the desire to join the Wirtschaftswunder had the same effect it had elsewhere. In addition, West Berlin would attract those unhappy with what was going on in West Germany incl.

German landscape made between and , Michael Schmidt has forged a new pictorial language to deconstruct the world he observes.

And then there were the Berliners themselves with their Berliner Schnauze. Schmidt was a self-taught photographer who quit his job as a policeman when he decided that he wanted to be a photographer. He told me he had become an apprentice with the police because his parents insisted on him having a steady, safe job. Quitting it, however, was something he needed to do, even if it meant the kinds of hardships many photographers are only too familiar with — a shortage of money being most prominent.

His photography centered on the city of West Berlin, its buildings and people, and, most crucially, its atmosphere. An amazing body of work, unfortunately, the book is sold out, and copies are very hard to find. Schmidt invited a number of American photographers to Berlin to work and teach there, including William Eggleston and John Gossage.

But none of that happened.