Tag: found photography

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Fast Photo (2024)

Fast Photo documents the interaction of several technical devices – an automobile, a radar station, and a camera. The camera is triggered by a radar and takes a photograph of a speeding car. The only purpose is the identification of car and driver. There is no photographer involved and there are no aesthetic considerations; it represents the photographic process in its crudest form, the exact opposite of haute photographie. The “price” of a fast photo – the ticket paid by the car’s driver – stands in inverse proportion to its low photographic quality.

Ongoing series, pigment ink prints (20 x 15 cm each), open edition
A catalogue is available in the series of white books.

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Drucksachen

A box containing rare and out-of-print books and ephemera including Erste allgemeine Altfotosammlung (1991) with a copy of the original flyer, Art Addicts Anonymous (1993), Bilder von der Straße (1994), Kunst gegen Essen (1996), Very Miscellaneous (1997), Sinterklaas ziet alles (1998), The Face in the Desert (1999), Alexander Honory. The Private Institute of Contemporary Family Photography / Joachim Schmid. The Institute for the Reprocessing of Used Photographs (2001), Traballos Fotográficos 1982–2002 (2002), A meeting on holiday (2004), Belo Horizonte, Praça Rui Barbosa (2004), Retratos decisivos (2005), Tausend Himmel (2007), the set of thirteen ABC Cards (2010), Illustriertes Tierleben (2010), a special, deliberately misprinted edition of The Coach House / An Inventory (2011), Ohne Worte (2013) plus a copy of Schmid Books, a comprehensive catalogue of all my publications since 1982.
2015
33 x 25 x 11 cm
20 copies
480 €

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Bilder von der Straße

Bilder von der Straße (Pictures from the Street) is a thirty-year project which began in 1982 and ended in 2012. During this time I picked up one thousand lost or abandoned photographs from the world’s pavements. Although the collection has been exhibited widely, this is the first time it is printed as a complete set. Published in four volumes, the books present every found photograph or its fragments in their original size and in the chronological order they were discovered. No artistic intervention has taken place except for the inclusion of the date and location where each picture was found. As well as providing a record of my travels, the books document people’s use and abuse of photographs, with almost all the photographs in the collection depicting people and more than half of these being ripped or defaced in some way.
This act of discarding or destroying individual photographs seems to point to a desire to eliminate memories of specific moments in people’s lives. By encouraging viewers to imagine the stories of the people depicted, the project raises questions about the emotionally-charged events that could warrant such destruction. I consider this collection to be a social documentary consisting of both visual artefacts and human documents. Produced in a systematic manner, it is an inventory of lost photographs and memories that hint at the mysteries of people’s private lives and at their attempts to document and destroy them.
2012 (the 2009 Blurb edition is discontinued)
print on demand, colour
29.7 x 21 cm, 4 volumes in a box, 256 pages each
softcover, perfect bound
open edition
price on application
email orders only

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Arcana

Arcana is a series of photographs made from discarded and damaged negatives that have been collected over a long period of time from many cities. These abandoned images have either been rejected or lost by their original owners. Removed from their original context and scratched by the streets they were dropped on, we are given a rare, altered glimpse into the everyday lives of strangers. There is a kind of violence in the degraded objects these negatives have become, but also a beauty. The book includes the entire series of 45 photographs.
2014 (the 2009 print-on-demand edition is discontinued)
digital print, b/w
21 x 14.8 cm, 48 pages
softcover, saddle-stitched
50 copies
8 €

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Belo Horizonte, Praça Rui Barbosa

When I made my first trip to Brazil in 1992 I arrived in Belo Horizonte, a city as big as Berlin that most people have never heard of outside Brazil. In a public square in the center of this city I found a series of black-and-white portrait negatives. The photographers who made these portraits worked in the square using extremely simple equipment: a wooden box that served both as a camera and a darkroom. In front of a simple backdrop, photographs were taken with that box and developed inside it. The clients got their portraits after few minutes. The negatives were discarded. I collected these negatives and printed them. The title of that work is Belo Horizonte, Praça Rio Branco. In 1993 I made a similar work, Belo Horizonte, Parque Municipal.
Originally these portraits were taken for various administrative purposes, ID cards, driving licenses, and so on. People who are well off get their portraits taken in studios, and people who cannot afford studio portraits go to the square. The photographers do not give directions to the people depicted. They take plain, frontal, straightforward portraits.
When I returned to Belo Horizonte this year the photographers had moved to another square. And they had abandoned their primitive technique. They work in colour now using 35 mm cameras. After the photographs are taken they run to the nearest lab to get the strip of film developed and printed. The clients pick up their portraits about half an hour after they were taken. Negatives are still discarded. During my stay in Belo Horizonte I got up very early every morning before the street cleaners start to work, walked to the square and collected all the negatives I found. The result is Belo Horizonte, Praça Rui Barbosa.
2004
offset, colour
14.8 x 10.5 cm, 64 pages
softcover
400 copies

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Belo Horizonte, Praça Rui Barbosa (2002)





^ foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, 2003

When I made my first trip to Brazil in 1992 I arrived in Belo Horizonte, a city as big as Berlin that most people have never heard of outside Brazil. In a public square in the center of this city I found a series of black-and-white portrait negatives. The photographers who made these portraits worked in the square using extremely simple equipment: a wooden box that served both as a camera and a darkroom. In front of a simple backdrop, photographs were taken with that box and developed inside it. The clients got their portraits after few minutes. The negatives were discarded. I collected these negatives and printed them. The title of that work is Belo Horizonte, Praça Rio Branco. In 1993 I made a similar work, Belo Horizonte, Parque Municipal.
Originally these portraits were taken for various administrative purposes, ID cards, driving licenses, and so on. People who are well off get their portraits taken in studios, and people who cannot afford studio portraits go to the square. The photographers do not give directions to the people depicted. They take plain, frontal, straightforward portraits.
When I returned to Belo Horizonte this year the photographers had moved to another square. And they had abandoned their primitive technique. They work in colour now using 35 mm cameras. After the photographs are taken they run to the nearest lab to get the strip of film developed and printed. The clients pick up their portraits about half an hour after they were taken. Negatives are still discarded. During my stay in Belo Horizonte I got up very early every morning before the street cleaners start to work, walked to the square and collected all the negatives I found. The result is Belo Horizonte, Praça Rui Barbosa.
JS, Berlin, September 2002

Photo-based installation consisting of 240 portraits, 24 x 18 cm each.
Ten selected portraits are available as c-prints (30 x 20 cm each on 42 x 30 cm paper, edition of 3 copies + 1 AP).
A selection of portraits was published in the book Belo Horizonte, Praça Rui Barbosa (2004).
Another selection is included in the book Lambe Lambe (2014).

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Sinterklaas ziet alles (1998)

Sinterklaas ziet alles was realized as part of PhotoWork(s) in Progress II/Constructing Identity, commissioned by Mondriaan Stichting and Nederlands Foto Instituut Rotterdam. The project consists of 180 stacks of index cards (offset print) in postcard racks.
The complete set of 180 index cards is available as a boxed set.

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Photographic Garbage Survey Project (1996–1997)


^ From Photographic Garbage Survey Project, Report No.2


^ Goethe-Institut, Galerie Condé, Paris 1996

For nearly fifteen years I’ve been collecting all photographs I’m finding in the street. Each photograph becomes part of the ongoing project Pictures from the Street. In the beginning, collecting this garbage was a casual activity, however, it slowly turned into an obsession. The longer I’ve been doing it and the more photographs I’ve been finding the more my way of perception changed. Now I don’t find photographs any more, I look for them – just like a truffle pig. Indeed I think that the nearly 400 photographs I have found so far are a treasure. Some of them are extremely fascinating images (mankind would have lost them irretrievably without my intervention) and the entire group forms a unique compendium of photographic garbage, an anti-museum. While museums collect and preserve those pictures which according to our society’s consensus are important samples of our present culture and should be kept for the future, I’m specialising in those images which obviously are considered so unsuitable and irritating that their makers and owners think they should not have any future at all. These images represent the other half of our culture.
In 1996 I started the Photographic Garbage Survey Project in order to collect and preserve thrown away photographs systematically. I travel to selected cities all over the world and stay there for some days or weeks. Every day I go for an erratic walk through another part of the city in order to collect all abandoned photographs. The result of these inspection tours is a report for each city consisting of the found photographs, a list of discovery sites, maps with the inspected streets marked, and a statistical evaluation. Altogether these reports form an international compendium of photographic pollution in modern cities. The project started in Vigo (May 1996). Subsequent cities include Paris (June 1996), Berlin (August 1996), Zurich (September 1996), São Paulo (November 1996), San Francisco (February 1997), and Rotterdam (July 1997).
JS, Berlin, August 1996
(Statement for the catalogue of the VII Fotobienal, Vigo 1996)

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Arcana (1985–2004)


^ Berlin, April 1986


^ Madrid, February 1992


^ Cambridge, March 1992


^ Lisbon, March 1993

Prints made from found negatives.
20 b/w photographs, 34 x 39 cm on 40 x 45 cm paper, printed in 1996
45 b/w pigment ink prints, 20 x 23 cm on 23 x 27 cm paper, printed in 2008, edition of 3 copies + 1 AP
10 b/w pigment ink prints, 34 x 39 cm on 40 x 45 cm paper, printed in 2014, edition of 3 copies + 1 AP
A catalogue is available in the series of white books.

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Photogenetic Drafts (1991)

This series of 32 photographs is based on the archive of a commercial photographer who donated the negatives he didn’t need any more to The Institute for the Reprocessing of Used Photographs. The photographer cut his negatives to prevent their future use. This attempt to preclude new prints triggered the creation of photographs that would not exist without the attempted destruction. Consistent point of view, consistent light, and consistent poses allowed the combination of two negatives into one single image. The resulting photographs are portraits of non-existing persons. They are based on the genetic pool of the population of a small town in Bavaria. Like in genetic engineering, existing information was dismantled and spliced to create formerly unknown mutations, playing with genetic inheritance, age, gender, and personality.
Cluster of portraits (178 x 314 cm) consisting of thirty-two b/w prints (37 x 28 cm each)
Photogenetic Drafts #s 4, 7, 8, 10, 15, 20, 24, 32 were reprinted in 2001 (48 x 34 cm each, edition of 3 copies + 1 AP)
A catalogue is available in the series of white books.

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Erste allgemeine Altfotosammlung (1990)

First General Collection of Used Photographs
Year in and year out an unimaginable number of photographs are produced worldwide. Virtually every day each of us enlarges this gigantic mountain of photographs, without giving the consequences a second thought. But while photography seems a harmless leisure pursuit, the chemicals contained in all photographs pose enormous dangers to our health. What‘s more, photographs in such quantities increase visual pollution and undermine our thinking power—to say nothing of the moral dangers they pose for our children.
In these conditions it would be best if we stopped making photographs altogether—but in many cases this is hardly possible. Therefore, it is essential to professionally dispose of all photographs once they are no longer needed. Experts from East and West have warned us for decades about the impending, catastrophic consequences of the photo boom, but their pleas have fallen on deaf ears among those responsible in industry and politics. Today billions of used photographs are stored improperly in homes and businesses, waiting for desparately needed recycling facilities.
The Institute for the Reprocessing of Used Photographs, privately founded in 1990, offers a clear path out of this seemingly inescapable situation. The Institute maintains all facilities necessary to professionally reprocess photos of all kinds—or, in hopeless cases, dispose of them ecologically. We collect used, abandoned and unfashionable photographs in black and white or color, including instant photographs, photobooth strips, entire photo albums, contact sheets, test strips, negatives and slides, as well as damaged and shredded items, in both small and large quantities.
Remember, used photographs do not belong in the household garbage—they need special disposal. Many photographs can serve a new and useful purpose after reprocessing. For the sake of our environment, send your used photographs to the Institute for the Reprocessing of Used Photographs.
Participation in this recycling program is guaranteed free of charge!


^
Torn-up studio portraits mounted on archival board, 50 x 40 cm each

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FixFoto (1986)

The print was made from a color negative strip that I found at the spot where the photographs were made and processed, in front of Berlin’s first one-hour lab. A closed circuit of making, processing, discarding, and finding a photograph.
B/W print mounted on aluminum 128 x 28.5 cm, edition of 3 copies + 1 AP

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Archiv (1986–1999)


^ Archiv #1, 1986


^ Archiv #74, 1988


^ Archiv #103, 1990


^ Archiv #190, 1992


^ Archiv #227, 1992


^ Archiv #248, 1992


^ Archiv #253, 1992


^ Archiv #266, 1992


^ Archiv #317, 1993


^ Archiv #606, 1994


^ Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery,
Saratoga Springs 2007

Archiv is an analytical survey of international vernacular photography through the course of 20th century consisting of assortments of images – snapshots, studio photos, postcards, commercial photos, photos of missing people, newspaper images – grouped and classified according to their similarity on panels. The panels highlight the mechanical uniformity and conformity of image production, the collective patterns and rituals of popular photographic representations. The project is a history, a commentary, and a celebration of the mundane weirdness of commonplace photography.
The project consists of 726 panels, 40 x 50 cm each.
146 panels were in the traveling exhibition ⟩Knipsen⟨. Private Fotografie in Deutschland von 1900 bis heute (Taking Snapshots. Amateur Photography in Germany from 1900 to the Present). They are now in the archive of Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart.
580 panels are in the collection of The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY.
A catalogue is available in the series of white books.

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Bilder von der Straße (1982–2012)


^ No.5, Berlin, April 1983


^ No.37, Berlin, August 1987


^ No.74, Barcelona, April 1990


^ No.75, Berlin, May 1990


^ No.83, Berlin, July 1990


^ No.140, Belo Horizonte, August 1992


^ No.187, São Paulo, September 1993


^ No.216, San Francisco, March 1994


^ No.217, Los Angeles, March 1994


^ No.246, Paris, October 1994


^ No.309, Paris, August 1995


^ No.344, Berlin, December 1995


^ No.379, New York, March 1996


^ No.409, Berlin, June 1996


^ No.414, Paris, July 1996


^ No.460, Rio de Janeiro, December 1996


^ No.629, Berlin, November 1999


^ No.714, Chicago, August 2001


^ No.744, Recife, April 2002


^ No.830, Madrid, February 2004


^ No.885, New York, February 2007


^ The Photographers’ Gallery, London 2007

The series Bilder von der Straße (Pictures from the Street) started in 1982 and came to an end in 2012 with the 1000th finding.
One thousand A4 panels of found photographs mounted on board, 29.7 x 21 cm each.
A complete documentation of the work is available as a four-volume book.