About

Berlin-based artist Joachim Schmid uses found photographs re-contextualizes the roles of artist, historian, critic, archeologist, and anthropologist to create a varied and moving exploration of vernacular photography.

Joachim Schmid sees photography as a culturally ubiquitous presence that runs throughout public and private spheres of modern life. He acquired the source materials for Photogenetic Drafts when he was sent a box of negatives that had been cut in two by the studio photographer, ostensibly rendering them unusable. By combining the portraits in these works, Schmid questions the conventions of studio portraiture. Simultaneously estranging the original subjects from half of themselves, while uniting them into a binary portrait, the predictable postures and expressions linking these types of images become apparent, and the resulting images are engaging and equally disturbing as they are humorous. Zwolf Frauen is a series of portraits of twelve women who all have received the Nobel Prize for literature. This body of work was inspired in response to Gerhard Richter’s 48 Portraits which only included men. Schmid examines the phenomenon of recognizability of famous people by pixalating the portraits so that only a minimum of visual information remains, yet the women are recognizable.

Joachim Schmid‘s work was featured in the 2014 exhibition Web on the Wall at the Robert Koch Gallery.