portraits – Joachim Schmid

2019-08-152020-12-22

Little Portraits

Samuel Little is a serial killer who was convicted of the murders of three women in California between 1987 and 1989 and one woman in Texas in 1994. He serves a lifelong sentence. In the spring of 2018, Little was hoping to move prisons. In exchange for a move, he was willing to talk. He remembers his victims and the killings in great detail. Little provided portraits of many of the women he killed. Some of these portraits have already helped identify victims. In total, Little confessed to ninety killings. Authorities have confirmed thirty-four of them. There are still a number of confessions that remain uncorroborated.
In 2019, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released twenty-six of Little’s portraits of unidentified victims.
2019
digital print, colour
14.8 x 10.5 cm, 64 pages
softcover, sewn
100 copies
16 €

2017-01-262020-12-15

Bilderbuch 2.0

Bilderbuch draws on an extensive archive of photographs taken from newspapers, magazines, books etc. that I have been gathering over more than 40 years. A selection from this ongoing collection of printed matter, removed from the original context and presented without any comment, was first published in book form in 2012. Bilderbuch 2.0 is an expanded remix of the book’s first edition.
2017
digital print, colour
21 x 14.8 cm, 144 pages
softcover, perfect bound
100 copies
32 €

2015-05-212022-02-11

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 €

2014-11-042020-12-04

Lambe Lambe

Three series of portraits, based on street photographers’ discarded negatives found in the streets of Belo Horizonte between 1992 and 2002.
The portraits in this book were made by anonymous “lambe-lambe” photographers in the streets of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and were not intended to be seen by a larger audience. Their initial function was for private clients who were in need of portraits for various administrative purposes. The photographers had the habit of discarding their negatives in the streets where I collected this treasure. The photographers worked with extremely simple equipment and they processed film and paper quickly disregarding any archival considerations. Despite or maybe even because of the seemingly artless process the images are striking and powerful. As a group they form a randomly composed collective portrait of the population of a city, and they are documents of an era gone by, replaced by the clean process of digital photography that does not leave any trash in the street.
2014 by Editorial RM
book design by Astrid Stavro
text in English, Spanish, Portuguese
offset, colour
18.5 x 13 cm, 120 pages
softcover, sewn
1,000 copies
ISBN 978-84-16282-00-5
28 €

2014-07-152020-12-17

One Day in May

Every time we learn about another gun rampage in the US, people ask the same questions – why did someone kill so many people, what went wrong with that person? In May, 2014 another one of these killing sprees occurred in Santa Barbara, California, claiming seven lives. One Day in May does not ask any of the usual questions but takes a look at the wider context of the event – the other fourty-nine shootings that happened on the same day, starting in Connecticut and ending in California in the course of the day. The Santa Barbara shooting is only one event in an ongoing series; it made international news because of the number of victims. Looking at the local news on any given day may tell us more about the occasional mass shooting than asking the same questions time and again.
2014
digital print, colour
14.8 x 10.5 cm, 124 pages
softcover, sewn
100 copies
32 € (last copies)

2014-06-112022-07-16

Photogenetic Drafts

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.
2014
digital print, b/w
21 x 14.8 cm, 36 pages
softcover, saddle-stitched
50 copies

2013-12-272021-04-09

Decisive Portraits

Decisive Portraits is a series of eight b/w photographs and a text panel. The photographs are portraits of black American soldiers taken by George Garland in April and May 1944 in Petworth, West Sussex.
2014 (the 2013 print-on-demand edition is discontinued)
digital print, b/w
21 x 14.8 cm, 20 pages
softcover, saddle-stitched
50 copies
8 €

2013-08-122020-08-21

Estrelas amadas

The series Estrelas amadas – Beloved Stars – is based on black and white photographs of movie stars found in a Portuguese magazine from the late 1950s. The former owner of the magazine, a young woman from Lisbon, coloured the lips of all her beloved stars in the brightest red, presumably soon after she acquired the magazine and decades before her copy ended up in a flea market.
2014 (the 2013 print-on-demand edition is discontinued)
digital print, colour
21 x 14.8 cm, 20 pages
softcover, saddle-stitched
50 copies
8 €

2013-07-292020-03-12

Estrelas amadas (2013)

The series Estrelas amadas – Beloved Stars – is based on black and white photographs of movie stars found in a Portuguese magazine from the late 1950s. The former owner of the magazine, a young woman from Lisbon, coloured the lips of all her beloved stars in the brightest red, presumably soon after she acquired the magazine and decades before her copy ended up in a flea market.
Twelve pigment ink prints, 24 x 30 cm each, and one print 60 x 100 cm, edition of 3 copies + 1 AP
A catalogue is available in the series of white books.

2013-07-272023-01-16

Archiv

Archiv (1986–1999) 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 entire project consist of 726 panels, the book includes a selection of 53 panels.
2014 (the 2013 print-on-demand edition is discontinued)
digital print, colour
21 x 14.8 cm, 56 pages
softcover, saddle-stitched
50 copies

2013-07-212021-04-12

Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts

The photographic project Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (People of the Twentieth Century) began as an experiment to see if there was any logic behind which newsworthy photographs make it to the front covers of newspapers, and how this may correspond with the diversity of photographs of the respective event. Created between August 1985 and March 1987, the final collection consists of fifteen booklets, each containing repetitive images of a particular person that, for some reason or another has made it onto the front covers of German newspapers.
The criterion for selecting the images was rigid; the photographs were only to be taken from a pre-chosen list of twenty German newspapers that were available in West-Berlin at the time; at least 50% of those newspapers had to feature the same person on their front cover for images to be selected.
Each newspaper has its own particular page in each booklet of compiled photographs. If one of the chosen newspapers did not publish an image of the respective person on its front cover, its respective page in the booklet is left blank.
The resulting booklets contain images that have been removed from their original context and presented without their relevant news stories. All photographs are (re-)printed in original size. Although some persons depicted are well-known, it is still the title of each book that gives the images some grounding. These include: The Civil Servant, The Physicist, The Artist, The Astronaut, The Goal Keeper, The Tennis Player, The Professor, The Princess, The Terrorist, The Actor, The Diplomat, The Writer, The Dissident, The Chancellor, and The Party Leader.
2013
digital print, colour
16 booklets, 29.7 x 21 cm, 24 pages each
softcover in box (32 x 24 x 4 cm)
25 copies

2013-07-212021-04-09

Bilderbuch

What do Elizabeth Taylor, a bicycle seat, Carlos the Jackal, a lobster, Silvio Berlusconi, and a toilet brush have in common? Nothing, except that their photographs all ended up in my archive of scanned printed matter gathered from around the world over four decades. Removed from their original news context and presented without any comment, this apparent random, unrelated series of images turns out to be a miscellaneous reflection of popular obsessions, fears and fantasies.
The book was made on the occasion of the Bilderbuch exhibition at Zephyr, Mannheim.
2012 in collaboration with Zephyr, Mannheim
digital print, colour
23 x 16 cm, 120 pages
softcover, sewn
250 copies

2013-07-212022-07-16

Zwölf Frauen

Pixelated portraits of twelve women united by a status unique only to them.
2014 (the 2011/2012 print-on-demand editions are discontinued)
digital print, b/w
21 x 14.8 cm, 16 pages
softcover, saddle-stitched
50 copies

2013-07-212021-04-09

Untitled Portraits

Twenty-one pixelated and decontextualized portraits of politicians altered in such a way as to test the treshold of recognition.
2014 (the 2011/2012 print-on-demand editions are discontinued)
digital print, colour
21 x 14.8 cm, 24 pages
softcover, saddle-stitched
50 copies
8 €

2013-07-212020-12-17

Vierzig Jahre

I have been collecting photographs for forty years. Some ended up in my works, others were discarded, and the rest I preserved in my collection despite not knowing what to do with them. The earliest of these survivors is a series of nineteen portraits reproduced in this book – portraits that have endured four continuous decades of sifting, disposal and preservation. There must be a reason for this.
2011
print on demand, colour
20 x 13 cm, 40 pages
softcover, perfect bound
open edition
12 €

2013-07-212024-10-27

L.A. Women

In December 2010, Los Angeles Police Department released one hundred and eighty photographs that were found in the possession of a serial murder suspect. All of them are photographs of women. These women may or may not be residents of Los Angeles, they may or may not be prostitutes (as were the women in the investigation). They may or may not be murder victims. We don’t know. We don’t even know whether the arrested suspect took these photographs himself.
Without knowing where the photographs come from, most of them wouldn’t be worth a second glance; for you and me, that is. Of course this is different for friends and family of the women depicted. And it is certainly different for the person who took these pictures. From the testimony of one surviving victim we know that the woman was first photographed, then shot, and then raped before she was dumped in the street.
Most of the women were clearly alive when the photos were taken; some are smiling, some are posing. Some appear to be asleep, they may or may not be sleeping the big sleep. Some of them may have been shot soon after or just before the photographer shot the picture. We don’t know.
It is actually the fact that we don’t know anything – apart from the context where these photographs come from – that makes them so eerie. We want to know more but the pictures don’t tell us. We look at them and they look at us. That’s all there is.
L.A. Women received an honorable mention in the 2011 Photography Book Now competition.
2011
print on demand, colour, uncoated paper
18 x 18 cm, 154 pages
hardcover with dust jacket
open edition
price on application
email orders only
(a slightly different edition of 50 copies with one extra sheet was launched at the 4th International Photobook Festival Kassel in 2011)

2013-07-212024-10-27

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

2013-07-212020-08-21

ABC Cards

To celebrate the first anniversary in 2010, ABC Artists’ Books Cooperative launched a unique set of collectible trading cards printed by Topps, manufacturers of fine baseball cards since 1950. This limited-edition, must-have item features a stellar line-up of international artists. The set of 13 cards presents your favorite on-demand book artists along with up-to-date career stats, all held together with a simple belly band. Cards are printed on acid free, heavy weight card stock in full colour with high gloss lamination to ensure maximum durability. Printed at the international trading card standard size, these golden nuggets will fit snuggly in most trading card albums.
2010
digital print, colour
13 cards, 9 x 6.5 cm each
100 copies
12 €

few copies signed by several artists are available, price on request

2013-07-212021-04-09

Retratos decisivos

Portraits of black American soldiers taken in the south of England in April and May 1944. Published by Photo España on the occasion of an installation in the Nuevos Ministerios station, the booklet was distributed for free to clients of the Madrid metro.
2005 by Photo España
offset, b/w
24 x 17 cm, 16 pages
softcover
10,000 copies

2013-07-212021-04-09

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

2013-07-212021-04-09

The Face in the Desert

Portraits and Stories from the Daily Herald Archive. Education notes written by Jo Booth.
1999 by National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford
offset, b/w
29.7 x 21 cm, 24 pages
softcover, saddle-stitched

2013-07-212021-04-12

The Face in the Desert

Published by the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television on the occasion of an installation in Bradford city centre, the paper was distributed for free to visitors of the museum.
1999 by National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford
offset, colour
37 x 30 cm, 52 pages
10,000 copies

2013-07-212020-08-21

Very Miscellaneous

A possible history of country life in Sussex from the 1920 to the 1960s constructed of portraits found in the George Garland archive combined with fragments of news stories photographed from local newspapers of the era.
1997 by Photoworks, Maidstone
offset, b/w
16 x 10 cm, 48 pages
softcover
1,000 copies
ISBN 0 9517427 2 8
40 € (last copies)

2013-07-212021-04-12

Bilder von der Straße

1994 by Edition Fricke & Schmid
offset, colour
21 x 14.8 cm, 36 pages
softcover
1,000 copies
ISBN 3 927365 28 9

2013-07-212021-04-09

Phantome

Reproductions of police drawings of wanted criminals with an insert list of various offenses that can be cut out and pasted to the picture of your choice.
1992 by Edition Fricke & Schmid
photocopy, b/w
21 x 14.8 cm, 36 pages
softcover
100 copies
ISBN 3 927365 22 X

2013-07-212021-04-09

Porträts

A collection of portraits of more or less well-known contemporaries with random factoid captions, collected from a Berlin tabloid.
1990 by Edition Fricke & Schmid
photocopy, b/w
21 x 14.8 cm, 36 pages
softcover
100 copies
ISBN 3 927365 17 3

2011-10-262024-02-16

Bilderbuch (2011–2019)

^ Bilderbuch at NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, 2017

^ Bilderbuch at Zephyr Mannheim, 2012

Unique site-specific print installations based on an ongoing collection of printed matter, removed from the original context and presented without any comment.
Pigment ink prints, 40 x 30 cm each

Bilderbuch 1.0, 120 pages, Berlin/Mannheim 2012
Bilderbuch 1.1: 16 pages in Joachim Schmid e le fotografie degli altri (2012)
Bilderbuch 1.2: 23 pages in The Lazlo Reader: The Art of Remaking. Second Chances (2015)
Bilderbuch 2.0, 144 pages, Berlin 2017
Bilderbuch 2.1: 28 pages in Emic Units #39 (2023)

2011-10-182018-03-03

Zwölf Frauen (2011)

Zwölf Frauen is a series of portraits of twelve women united by a status unique only to them.
Twelve pigment ink prints, 40 x 30 cm each, edition of 3 copies + 1 AP
A catalogue is available in the series of white books.

2007-08-202021-11-27

Untitled Portraits (2007)

Pixelated and decontextualized portraits of politicians altered in such a way as to test the treshold of recognition.
21 pigment ink prints, 50 x 66,7 cm on 80 x 60 cm paper
A catalogue is available in the series of white books.

2006-01-012018-07-18

Retratos decisivos (2004)

Retratos decisivos was a temporary public art project commissioned by and realized in collaboration with PhotoEspaña in Madrid in June 2004 on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of D-Day. The project consisted of both an extensive installation in Madrid’s metro station Nuevos Ministerios and a brochure that was distributed for free among the users of the Madrid metro. The work is based on the series Decisive Portraits.

2006-01-012020-06-05

Belo Horizonte, Praça Rui Barbosa (2002)

^ foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, 2003

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).

2006-01-012018-07-18

Decisive Portraits (1998)

^ Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs 2007

They came from the United States of America.
Evans, Garrett, Private in 9th Army Air Corps. Coley, Chapman and a Master Sgt., 23rd Apr. 1944
They gathered in the south of England.
Pattiford – Goodlet, Johnson – Hovington, 9th Army Air Corps, April 1944
They prepared for the day of decision.
Bradley – Bailey – Booth – Van Reed, 9th U.S. Army Air Corps, April 1944
They made no decisions themselves.
Basden. Mils. Liggans, U.S.A., May 1944
They imagined their lives after the battle.
Dulin. Slade. Johnson. Roebuck, U.S. Army, May 1944
They had their portraits taken before leaving.
Andrews, Pte. Powell, Sgt. Montgomery, Sgt. Montague, U.S. Air Force, May 1944
They left on the morning of June 6th.
Jones U.S.A., Nolan U.S.A., Scott U.S.A., Miles U.S.A., May 1944
Their portraits remained.
Bishop, Dailey, Bradley, Ferguson, U.S. Army, 1944

Decisive Portraits is derived from portraits taken by George Garland in April and May 1944 in Petworth, Sussex (see Very Miscellaneous).
Based on these portraits, Retratos decisivos was a temporary public art project, commissioned by and realized in collaboration with PhotoEspaña in Madrid in 2004.
Eight b/w photographs and a text panel, 38 x 28 cm each, edition of 2 copies
A catalogue is available in the series of white books.

2006-01-012019-07-14

Very Miscellaneous (1996)

^ Fabrica, Brighton, 11 October to 1 November 1997

^ Hasselblad Center, Konstmuseet Göteborg 1999

^ Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs 2007

Very Miscellaneous is based on the George Garland Collection and the archive of newspapers at the West Sussex Record Office. The work was commissioned by PhotoWorks as part of the Country Life series, curated by Val Williams.
Variable cluster of seventy b/w photographs, appr. 20 x 30 cm each.
Six portraits and six texts are available as diptychs (one portrait and one text in any combination; b/w prints, 36 x 24 cm each, edition of 3 copies + 1 AP).

2006-01-012018-07-18

Belo Horizonte, Parque Municipal (1993)

The Belo Horizonte, Parque Municipal portraits were made from discarded negatives found in Belo Horizonte (see Belo Horizonte, Praça Rui Barbosa).
Cluster of sixty b/w prints, 29 x 19 cm each, total dimension 132 x 353 cm
A selection of portraits is included in the book Lambe Lambe (2014).

2006-01-012018-07-18

Belo Horizonte, Praça Rio Branco (1992)

The Belo Horizonte, Praça Rio Branco portraits were made from discarded negatives found in Belo Horizonte (see Belo Horizonte, Praça Rui Barbosa).
Cluster of forty-five b/w prints, 27 x 20 cm each, total dimension 156 x 225 cm
A selection of portraits is included in the book Lambe Lambe (2014).

2006-01-012018-07-18

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.

2006-01-012018-07-18

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.