by Joachim Schmid
Between 2008 and 2011 Joachim Schmid assembled a series of ninety-six print-on-demand books that explore the themes presented by modern every day, amateur photographers: Other People’s Photographs. Images found on photo sharing sites such as Flickr have been gathered and ordered in a way to form a library of contemporary vernacular photography in the age of digital technology and online photo hosting. Each book is comprised of images that focus on a specific photographic event or idea, the grouping of photographs revealing recurring patterns in modern popular photography. The approach is encyclopedic but the selection of themes is neither systematic nor does it follow any established criteria — the project’s structure mirrors the multifaceted, contradictory and chaotic practice of modern photography itself, based exclusively on the motto “You can observe a lot by watching”.
Picture Library is a sequel to Other People’s Photographs. Both series draw on the same source, but while the earlier one explores recurring patterns in everyday photography, the latter focuses on individual particularities and obsessions, highlighting various inventories of people’s lives and environments.
Joachim Schmid
Joachim Schmid is an artist who has been working with found photographs and texts since the early eighties. His research questions, with a skeptical approach, the role of authorship and artistic intention in relation to the final outcome. A systematic collection of photographs without scientific or cataloguing purposes, but driven solely by the desire to reveal the vast hidden potential carried by images produced outside the artistic sphere.He published numerous artist books. His work has been exhibited internationally and is included in numerous collections. He lives in a populated place in Brandenburg, Germany.
