Joachim Schmid

Joachim Schmid is a pioneer of the genre of ‘found photography’ and has been described thus ‘an archaeologist of the ordinary and every day of our visual culture … preoccupied of what is commonly seen to be culturally devalued visual material, Schmid organizes and recycles pictures into ordered arrangements’. (Schuhmacher 2013).

On his Flickr page, we find an overview of his work ‘other people’s photographs’, a series of 96 books covering all manner of mundane subjects captured by Flickr users. Prior to the internet, he completed similar projects using physical photographs he ‘gathered’ from junk shops etc. Schmid avoid using the word ‘collected’ as he sees himself as a consumer rather than a collector of images

From reading interviews with Schmid on weareOCA.com and americansuburbx.com it is hard to define his motivation for his passion, although there appears to be a theme that he is illustrating that perhaps photography is the most assessable and widely undertaken art form and because of this, not all photography is intended to be art. Schmid, however, appears angry that the artistic world at large wants to exclude the photographs that are not intentionally taken as art.

Schmid acknowledges that photography it is much more than art. He is interested in how people usually take the same sort of photographs, even though they are not ‘taught’ how to do this and therefore, he argues, there must be some kind of ‘unspoken or unconscious code’. This is a something that I think is very clear in society – as babies we learn by mimicking our parents, as adolescents we mimic pop stars / our idols and therefore this transports into photography.

Most people holiday or family snaps are similar because there is an unwritten code of what your friends at work expect to see and this is true of those of us who aspire to be serious photographers – initially we start copying the adverting and news images we see around us. I know that I at 14 when I first got a camera I wanted to take photos like Din McCullen and Steve McCurry.

Schmid also acknowledges the physical quality of photographs. “An important feature of the work is the physical quality of photographs. They are kind of objects. They have an object like character, people have them in their wallets or wherever and then they tear them apart. I like the physicality of that work and I think it makes most of the fascination.” (Schuhmacher, 2013)

And it with this statement that he appears to be acknowledging the collector in him, the desire to possess and collect all that is available – and a trait that many people have young and old. Just look for example how the Pokémon Go app/game captured the imagination of the world in 2016.

Personally, I find “found photography” strange, there is a fascination to see what out there and how someone like Schmid is documenting it – and if I’m honest I would spend hours poring over his books. However, I have little desire to replicate; which to some degree is a failing on my part because as an artist we need to collect inspirations for our future and work. But I’m scared that I would become just obsessed with collecting for collecting sake.

In summation though Schmid work is more than just collecting inspirations, it appears to be some between a crazed child obsessed with their collection of Star Wars Figure, Trading Cards, Panini stickers, the list is endless and a serious reflection or reaction to the stuffy nature of the art establishment treatment of photography – reminding us that whatever the reason for the photograph it is still a piece of art.

Bibliography

AMERICAN SUBURB X. (2013). ASX Interviews Joachim Schmid. [online] Available at: http://www.americansuburbx.com/2013/12/asx-interview-interview-joachim–schmid-2013.html [Accessed 16 Jan. 2018].

Joachim Schmid. (2018). Joachim Schmid. [online] Available at: https://schmid.wordpress.com/ [Accessed 16 Jan. 2018].

Flickr. (2018). Joachim Schmid. [online] Available at: https://www.flickr.com/people/joachimschmid/ [Accessed 16 Jan. 2018].

WeAreOCA. (2013). An Interview with Joachim Schmid – WeAreOCA. [online] Available at: https://weareoca.com/subject/photography/an-interview-with-joachim-schmid/ [Accessed 8 Jan. 2018].