Michael Schmidt - Berlin-Kreuzberg. Stadtbilder - 1984

VERY EARLY AND HIGHLY IMPRESSIVE GERMAN PHOTOBOOK by Michael Schmidt -
here in the scarce hardcover edition with original dustjacket (there was also a paperback variant at the same time).

ONE OF THE BEST AND MOST SCARCE PUBLICATIONS by the legendary German photographer.

Michael Schmidt became famous through "Ein-heit" ("U-ni-ty") and through "Waffenruhe" ("Ceasefire").
As first German photographer he got a solo-exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MOMA).

Michael Schmidt's book "Waffenruhe" is mentioned here:
- Martin Parr, The Photobook, vol 2, page 65
- The Open Book, Hasselblad Center, page 336/337
- 802 photo books from the M.+M. Auer collection, page 673

THIS IS THE FIRST BEST-OF-PHOTOBOOKS AUCTION by 5Uhr30.com, starting in 2026.
With more than 100 great lots from my personal collection and from recent acquisitions.

Publica, Berlin. 1984. First edition, first printing.

Hardcover with dustjacket. 285 x 243 mm. 80 pages. 68 black and white photos. Photos: Michael Schmidt. Edited by "Bezirksamt Kreuzberg von Berlin". Layout: Gabriele Götz. Text in German.

Condition:
Book inside excellent, fresh and flawless, clean with no marks and with no foxing. Book outside partly lightly sunned, otherwise fresh and flawless. Dustjacket complete with no missing parts, so still very impressive, but with some trace of use; marginally sunned, one very small tear at the bottom left corner of the front (easily to restore), bigger nick on the front cover. Overall fine condition.

Important and impressive photobook by Michael Schmidt, one of the most influantial German photographers after the second world war, with the original dustjacket - scarce.

This is a lot by 5Uhr30.com (Ecki Heuser, Cologne, Germany).
We guarantee detailed and accurate descriptions, 100% transport protection, 100% transport insurance and of course combined shipping - worldwide.

Michael Schmidt was a German photographer. His subjects of interest were Berlin and "the weight of German identity in modern history." In 1965 Schmidt began photographing the streets, buildings and people of West Berlin in a semi-documentary approach. He went on to make a series of "ambitious projects" there, all in black and white and becoming more impressionistic, until his death in 2014. Each project was exhibited, then published as a book. Schmidt was a member of the Düsseldorf School of Photography.
In 1976, he founded the Werkstatt für Photographie (Workshop for Photography) in Berlin.
U-nit-y was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1996, Frauen was shown at the Berlin Biennale in 2010 and Lebensmittel, a series about the global food industry, at the Venice Biennale in 2013. A retrospective of his work was held at Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2010. His book Waffenruhe (1987) was included in Parr and Badger's The Photobook: A History, Volume II. He died in 2014, a couple of days after winning the Prix Pictet for Lebensmittel.

Michael Schmidt was born on 6 October 1945 in East Berlin, five months after the German surrender ended World War II in Europe. His family crossed to West Berlin before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. He began photographing in 1965 when he was 20 years old. In 1976, Schmidt founded the Werkstatt für Photographie (Workshop for Photography) at the Volkhochschule (Adult Education Center) in Berlin. The school "played a critical role in Berlin becoming a transatlantic forum of exchange between European and American photographers."
His early series about Berlin, Stadtlandschaft (Urban Landscapes) (1974–1975) and Berlin, Stadtbilder (Berlin, Urban Images) (1976–1980), "mapped out the city in which he lived in a semi-documentary way". Other series about Berlin include Berlin-Wedding (1976–1978); Berlin nach 45 (Berlin after 45) (1980); Waffenruhe (Ceasefire) (1985–1987), about the Berlin Wall and those affected by it; and Ein-heit (U-ni-ty) (1991–1994), contemporary urban landscapes and portraits from Germany mixed with historical images from the National Socialist / Nazism period, his response to the fall of the Wall in 1989 and the subsequent reunification of East and West Germany.
Natur (Nature) (1987–1997) contains black and white images of the German landscape. Lebensmittel (foodstuff) took seven years to make, with Schmidt travelling worldwide. He photographed "across the spectrum of mass food production, from factory farms" (including salmon farms and dairy farms), and bread factories, "to industrial slaughterhouses and on to plastic-wrapped, sanitised portions of food in supermarkets."
He died on 24 May 2014.