Michael SchmidtIrgendwo

Somehow a somewhere is always like a nowhere. This circumstance also distinguishes Michael Schmidt’s photography. He assembles series of photographs into books and exhibitions. His conception of photography, however, has little to do with labelling; rather, image by image, he documents a place, non-places, the inhabitants. These are tentative movements that at times brusquely seek to overturn the whole procedure, because they are always determined a little by impatience. After all, another place might yet come along, other, equally interesting inhabitants. The almost epochally indifferent-seeming pictures and, of course, books of “Waffenruhe” or “EIN-HEIT” have brought Michael Schmidt into the front rank of German photographers. He was in fact given the first solo exhibition of a German photographer at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; a second has since followed, as have contributions to a number of thematic exhibitions. With his project “Irgendwo” Michael Schmidt takes aim directly at the “dark heart” of Germany, if this Conradian metaphor is appropriate at all. For here is mass architecture, the cosy, the absolute provinces; here people look … no different from the way they look in Berlin. And yet in Michael Schmidt’s photographs they exude a mood that stirs something deep and dark. And if one then asked Michael Schmidt what had preoccupied him, an anecdotal companionship can suddenly arise that dissolves all dark moments in an instant.

Exhibitions:
Kunstverein Heilbronn, 4/2 – 10/4/2005
Oldenburger Kunstverein, 24/4 – 5/6/2005
Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, 7/10 – 2/12/2005
Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg, 5/3 – 7/5/2006
Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, Magdeburg, 25/6 – 17/9/2006