Michael Schmidt: 89/90

Masterpieces

"In his oeuvre," writes Chris Dercon, "which dates back to 1965, the German photographer Michael Schmidt, born in Berlin in 1945, has repeatedly explored the constantly changing urban landscape of his birthplace. Schmidt gained international recognition with his book 'Waffenruhe' (1987), which paid homage to a new lyrical style and used grey as a distinct colour. In 'Waffenruhe', Schmidt focuses on the emotional conditions of ideological change as reflected in Berlin's urban spaces and the lives of its inhabitants. 'I took some pictures in which only soup can be seen - the same soup that prevailed in November back then,' Schmidt said about some of his Berlin photographs at the end of the 1970s. Was he alluding to the later soup of the legendary autumn of 1989 without even suspecting it at the time? However, Schmidt does not see himself as a socially critical photographer. He did not want to change the world, but rather resist it and considered himself a realist in the Brechtian sense: 'Realism is not how things really are, but how things really are. [...]
In '89/90' the Wall appears again. Or rather: we are invited to look at what is near or next to the old Wall and has not (yet) been removed by the new Berlin. Some of Schmidt's scenes look like photos from excavations. They are rather brusque dispositives: individual objects or mere traces capture the viewer's eye with a rawness or defencelessness, as if they were participating in an act of protest. But all things remain mute. As in his exhibitions and other books, Schmidt has omitted all direct explanations and revealing subtitles in '89/90'. In this way, Schmidt succeeds in scrutinising the historical status of the respective monument or document even more emphatically. Indeed, his photographs of Berlin and its legendary Wall stand first and foremost for what Heidegger once described in his essay of the same title as 'the time of the world view'. For Heidegger's 'essential thinking', a world view is not an image of the world, but the world perceived and grasped as an image. It is precisely this distinction that characterises Schmidt's approach when he confronts the observer with the process of seeing as such. [...]
Schmidt's entire photographic oeuvre is one big enquiry into the question of what state Germany was, is and will be in. Michael Schmidt's pictures are unmistakably 'images of Germany', and in this he stands in the same tradition as his colleagues August Sander, Bernd and Hilla Becher and Hans-Peter Feldmann, all equally exemplary photographers of the German states."

Exhibition:
Haus der Kunst, Munich, 21/5-22/8/2010