Michael Schmidt - UNITY [TRUE 1st EDITION] - 1996

UNITY - MICHAEL SCHMIDT.

1996, TRUE 1ST ORIGINAL EDITION, SCALO LIMITED PUBLISHING, VERY GOOD CONDITION, ULTRA PHOTOGENIC WEST E/ EAST GERMANY HISTORIC PHOTOBOOK


No reserve price!


A remarkable, essential photography book of the 20th century, covering Germany from the post‑Nazi era to the reunified Germany, East/West after the fall of the Berlin Wall. A major work by Michael Schmidt: UNITY. 1996 first edition from Scalo Verlag. Unpublished, historical, unparalleled photographs captured through the lens of the great German photographer Michael Schmidt.

Sublime edition, approx. 320 pages, in duotone black-and-white gravure reproductions of Schmidt’s most unpublished film photographs taken during the second half of the 20th century, notably in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

A grand masterpiece by the author, regarded as a master of modern photography. German national identity, war propaganda, German culture—many themes are covered through the unpublished photographs of Michael Schmidt in this major illustrated retrospective. Book in very good condition!

Passion and Collection Photography Book, in its first original edition.


Some descriptive elements:

" Michael Schmidt ; [editor, Thomas Weski]. This Book Is Published To Accompany The Exhibition ... At The Museum Of Modern Art, New York, January 18-march 26, 1996; At Sprengel Museum Hannover, May 26-august 4, 1996; At Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Neue Meister, Albertinum, Dresden, Spring 1997--t.p. Verso. The Project Originated In The Context Of Siemens Kulturprogramm, Munich--t.p. Verso."

Schmidt made U-NI-TY in response to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent reunification of East and West Germany. (The German title, EIN-HEIT, is split in two.) Composed of 163 pictures, some taken by the artist, others culled from newspapers, old and recent magazines, propaganda journals, history books, and related sources, this work is a meditation on national identity. Schmidt drew upon two artistic traditions in photography: the use of the medium as a means of expression by individual practitioners, and its use as a vast resource of existing images that can be drawn from and reused at will. Bringing the two together, he explored the relationship between the individual and the state, from the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 through the nearly fifty years of ideological opposition that divided Germany after 1945.

Schmidt interspersed contemporary photographs of ordinary places and individuals with archival images of anonymous and famous people, interiors and exteriors, mass scenes, emblems, and monuments. History is presented not as a linear sequence of well-defined events but as a decentered, simultaneous overlapping of ever-shifting frameworks and viewpoints. Viewers are obliged to ponder whether a given image was made in East or West Germany, before or after World War II, during the period of separation, or since reunification.
"


As photogenic as Peress, Gursky, or Andujar, a sublime book.


A unique, sumptuous, historic and photogenic specimen!


Very good.


No reserve price!


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