Michael Schmidt - Berlin. Stadtlandschaft und Menschen - 1978

VERY EARLY, VERY IMPORTANT BOOK from 1978 (!) by Michael Schmidt, the German cult photographer.

As first German photographer, Michael Schmidt had a single exhibition at the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York (in 1996 with 'U-ni-ty'), which made him well-known worldwide and which was his (international) break-through as a photographer.

ONE OF THE BEST PUBLICATIONS BY THE ARTIST.
SCARCE MICHAEL SCHMIDT TITLE - WITH THE VERY SCARCE ORIGINAL DUSTJACKET.

Michael Schmidt is also famous for his publication "Waffenruhe" (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 a lot by 5Uhr30.com (Ecki Heuser, Cologne, Germany).
5Uhr30.com guarantees detailed and accurate descriptions, 100% protection,
100% insurance and combined shipping worldwide

Stapp, Berlin. 1978. First edition, first printing.

Hardback with dustjacket. 220 x 275 mm. 92 pages. Photos: Michael Schmidt. Text in German.

Condition:
Book inside and outside excellent, fresh and flawless, clean with no marks and with no foxing. Dustjacket quite fresh and complete with no tears, with no taped tears and with no missing parts, but with trace of use; some small yellow stains on the front, defects at the bottom right corner of the rear side. Overall fine condition.

Fantastic early Michael Schmidt title - very scarce with the original dustjacket.
Michael Schmidt had a big revival in 2020 with the great retrospective shows in Berlin, Paris and Vienna.

'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.'
(Wikipedia)

'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 Volkhoschschule (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.'
(Wikipedia)