black books – Joachim Schmid

2016-07-042020-12-23

Unfortunate Selfies

A compilation of international news reports about (mostly lethal) accidents that happened while and because people were distracted by taking selfies. Many of these incidents seem so surreal that we find it hard to believe what we read. But all the accidents described in this book really happened, the facts are double-checked.
Unfortunate Selfies was nominated for the Prix Bob Calle 2019 du livre d’artiste.
2016
print on demand, b/w
17.5 x 11 cm, 76 pages
softcover, perfect bound
open edition
12 €

2013-07-212021-03-21

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Photography

2013-07-212020-12-23

Awesome Errors, Dreadful Glitches

The internet is flooded with billions of snapshots, many of which are hosted on photo sharing websites like Flickr. With millions more added every day, we often wonder why people decide to take these pictures, why they save them, why they put them on public display. Awesome Errors, Dreadful Glitches is about the photographic errors, mistakes, glitches, and malfunctions that so many find fascinating. Contrary to popular belief, people do not simply delete pictures when they go wrong, they often develop an affection and curiosity for them, uploading them to photo sharing sites in huge numbers and helping create an apparently booming sub-genre of photography.
2012 (the 2012 Blurb edition is discontinued)
print on demand, b/w
17.5 x 11 cm, 80 pages
softcover, perfect bound
open edition
12 €

2013-07-212020-12-23

Lost Memories

In the age of digital photography, taking snapshots has become a reliably constant background sound of everyday life, in fact everywhere we turn there is somebody taking photographs. It has got to the point that we can’t imagine life without the possibility of a camera recording it. Losing a camera, and indeed these visual recordings of everyday activities is, for most people, an awfully emotional scenario to find oneself in. And it happens more often than we may think. Perhaps unsurprisingly a number of websites have been created as an antidote for this. Their purpose? To reunite people with their lost cameras and in turn, their lost photographs.  Lost Memories documents some of these Internet messages, or pleas of people who are desperately seeking their lost cameras. Many of them are heart-wrenching distress calls that disclose the importance of photographs in modern life. The book is a compilation of such desperate attempts to retrieve personal lost treasures. Every cry for help evokes Bruce Chatwin’s observation that “to lose a passport was the least of one’s worries; to lose a notebook was a catastrophe.”
2012 (the 2010 Blurb edition is discontinued)
print on demand, b/w
17.5 x 11 cm, 80 pages
softcover, perfect bound
open edition
12 €

2013-07-212020-12-24

But Is It Art?

The internet is flooded with billions of snapshots, many of which are hosted on photo sharing sites like Flickr. With millions more added every day, we often wonder why people decide to take these pictures, why they save them, why they put them on public display. Studying the captions and descriptions of these photographs we see a variety of reasons for their existence. But is it Art? is a new addition to my series of black books exploring the realm of online photo hosting sites. The book contains images that are screenshots, specifically from the website Flickr. Each image shows people’s attempts at creating photography “after”, “based on”, “in the style of” or “inspired by” well-known artists, to varying degrees of success. As individual attempts these samples may be charming, hilarious or bold (and sometimes embarrassing), as a group they raise more interesting questions of originality and authorship.
But Is It Art? was shortlisted for the 2011 Artists’ Book of the Moment award.
2012 (the 2010 Blurb edition is discontinued)
print on demand, b/w
17.5 x 11 cm, 120 pages
softcover, perfect bound
open edition
12 €

2013-07-212020-12-17

Quick Response

Quick Response is a hands-on introduction into the realm of QR code applications and demonstrates a way in which two-dimensional bar codes can be used to view images. People have to “read” this book by taking photos of each page using a cameraphone. The phone’s QR code reader will then decode the abstract image to reveal that each of them is an encoded URL for a photograph hosted on Flickr. The series of photos demonstrates the variety of modern commercial, artistic and subversive QR code applications. In addition, the book demonstrates a new way of appropriating other people’s photographs.
2012 (the 2010 Blurb edition is discontinued)
print on demand, b/w
17.5 x 11 cm, 40 pages
softcover, perfect bound
open edition
12 €

2013-07-212022-02-11

The Missing Pictures

Between 2006 to 2008 I completed a series of works based on imagery found on the Internet. These works are a continuation from the Archiv project, altered to suit the circumstances of modern technologies. Digital photography, Internet, and photo sharing sites have created a new visual environment and new forms of producing, distributing and using photographs. Digital multichannel photo installations such as Netzerscheinungen and Reload were my response to this new situation, researching the realm of online photography for recurring motifs and patterns. A small selection of photographs incorporated into these works have been presented on my website. Since receiving several complaints by photographers who found their images on my site I have replaced the images with placeholders denoting a removed or missing image. This has also turned into a new book. The book contains the complete set of these icons indicating that something went wrong with a photograph. It goes without saying that these were found on the Internet as well, just like the photographs they replace.
2012 (the 2009 Blurb edition is discontinued)
print on demand, b/w
17.5 x 11 cm, 40 pages
softcover, perfect bound
open edition
12 €

2013-07-212020-12-23

Cool Pictures, Cool Stuff

The internet is flooded with billions of snapshots, many of which are hosted on photo sharing websites like Flickr. With millions more added every day, we often wonder why people decide to take these pictures, why they save them, why they put them on public display. Studying the captions and descriptions of these photographs we see a variety of reasons for their existence. One of them is simple, striking and apparently quite popular: “I thought it looked cool.” There is an incredible number of photographs on Fickr that people have taken because they thought something looked ‘cool’.  The book consists of 116 images based on various perceptions of what people consider to be ‘cool’. Each picture is accompanied by the photographer’s original caption. The resulting collection of images is very revealing and often hilarious.
2012 (the 2009 Blurb edition is discontinued)
print on demand, b/w
17.5 x 11 cm, 120 pages
softcover, perfect bound
open edition
12 €

2013-07-212020-12-23

When Boredom Strikes

The internet is flooded with billions of snapshots, many of which are hosted on photo sharing websites like Flickr. With millions more added every day, we often wonder why people decide to take these pictures, why they save them, why they put them on public display. Studying the captions and descriptions of these photographs we see a variety of reasons for their existence. One of them is simple, striking and apparently quite popular: boredom. There is an incredible number of photographs on Fickr that people have taken just because they’ve been bored.  The book assembles 156 photographs made on account of boredom. Each picture is accompanied by the photographer’s original caption. In stark contrast to the title this book isn’t boring at all, but very revealing and often hilarious.
2012 (the 2009 Blurb edition is discontinued)
print on demand, b/w
17.5 x 11 cm, 160 pages
softcover, perfect bound
open edition
12 €

2009-05-012018-02-26

Black Books and White Books

I would like to introduce two more collections of books that follow on from my recent work Other People’s Photographs. The project began in 2008 and continues to the present day. It is published as a series of books with grey covers, printed on demand, numbered and signed. These grey books are obtained only through my website. The second and third collections of books will have either black or white covers and focus on my past works as well as new compilations of other people’s images.
The white books feature artworks I have made over the course of my career. They are catalogues of projects that have not previously been available as books or are new versions of out of print books.
The first four white books are now available: Arcana, Cyberspaces, Faits divers, and Reload.
Similar to the series Other People’s Photographs, the black books are concerned with finding patterns within the behaviour of photography. Here, though I have begun focusing on the repetition of word, rather than the repetition of image. These are books about photography but from a more “light-hearted” perspective.
The first book of this series is now available: When Boredom Strikes. In stark contrast to the title this book isn’t boring at all, but very revealing and often hilarious.
Both the white books and the black books are printed on demand. They are neither numbered nor signed.