Schmidt could certainly have had it easier. Others became rich and famous by photographing things that everyone was already interested in, or by travelling the world to take the same picture over and over in different settings. Schmidt, though, broke the mould with each new series. In 1967, while Michael Ruetz was shooting iconic images of historic demonstrations and sit-ins, Schmidt was exploring Kreuzberg’s courtyards. And in 1989, when pictures of partying crowds on the Berlin Wall went around the world, he was taking photos of deserted squares in East German housing projects.
Gravity’s Rainbow (Kolja Reichert for FRIEZE)


Beyond the working-class district of Kreuzberg, he would at most photograph the similarly proletarian districts of Wedding and Reinickendorf—and in East Berlin too—but never in the more placid boroughs of Berlin’s west.
Of Walls and People (Peter Richter for SZ)


Five years after the Berlin Kreuzberg series, reportage’s claim to depict people, things and living conditions as objectively as possible led Schmidt in the opposite direction, towards a more clinical approach: people at home and at work, carefully lit, follow a section showing deserted streets in his book on another Berlin district (Berlin-Wedding, 1978). This book was the only time Schmidt came close to the school of Bernd and Hilla Becher, before abandoning such strict formalism the same year, exemplified by the photos in his book “Berlin. Stadtlandschaft und Menschen“ (Berlin. Cityscape and People).
Gravity’s Rainbow (Kolja Reichert for FRIEZE)


In this period of his career Schmidt contacted various district authorities in West Berlin proposing to document their districts photographically as he had already done in Kreuzberg. In November 1976 he wrote a plan for the Bezirksamt Wedding as part of the contract negotiations, describing how he proposed to work for the intended project. (…) Once again Schmidt took responsibility for the whole production and publication process. His tasks ranged from the production to the plate-ready state of all photographs, to the design of the book, including the layout and captions, as well as the typographic styling of the texts, the supervising of the printing and the final production of the plates.
Biography (Compiled by Thomas Weski)


“It was the only training college you could get into without an entrance exam,” recalls Schmidt’s then-assistant Wolfgang Eilmes—now a photographer at this newspaper. It was in such venues that people like Wilmar Koenig, Ulrich Görlich, and Uschi Blume mutually sharpened their senses during deep-into-the-night discussions that are legendary not least for Schmidt’s refusal to pander to personal sensitivities. There was one question always at the core of everything: what does the image have to do with you? In the role of the teacher Schmidt was thus the antithesis to the Bechers, who were more interested in exploring the apparatus. It was nevertheless he who advised the young Gursky to approach the Bechers during a seminar being held at the Folkwang School in Essen. These days, however, Gursky prefers referring back to Michael Schmidt.
When Images Rehearsed the Revolt (Kolja Reichert for FAZ) December 12, 2012


“Die berufstätige Frau” (…) For comprehensive reportages on different professions were the result: a doctor, a soldier at the Deutsche Telephonwerke, a postal clerk at the giro office and a Turkish piece-worker at Siemens. The reportages are structured as observations on a single working day, beginning with breakfast and ending back at home after work in the living room.
For Now, the Neighbourhood. Micheal Schmidt’s Early Work (Ute Eskildsen)


Significantly, this was the time when Peter Galassi—then photo curator of the Museum of Modern Art in New York—organized the first solo exhibition by a German photo artist to be held at MoMA: his show on Schmidt’s Ein-heit cycle. When Schmidt’s Waffenruhe series went on show there in the late 1980s, his images seemed to have struck a nerve that, ultimately, had relatively little to do with the actual subject—the psychogram of a divided city in a state of cold war. It is said that many New Yorkers of the era found the collective attitude of their city had never been better represented than in Schmidt’s tough, dark photographs of Berlin.
Of Walls and People (Peter Richter for SZ)


In 2013 Schmidt was invited to participate in the Venice Biennale by Massimiliano Gioni, the artistic director that year. He showed “Lebensmittel” as a large installation within the main exhibition, “II Palazzo Enciclopedico”. After returning to Berlin, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. While receiving treatment he compiled photographs of nature from his archive, taken at the end of the 1980s, mostly during his time at Schnackenburg. From his hospital bed he oversaw the production of the book that he himself had designed; entitled Natur (Nature); it was published by the Mack Verlag.
Biography (Compiled by Thomas Weski)