Born in 1955 in Balingen, Germany
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Joachim Schmid is a Berlin-based artist who has worked with found photography since the early 1980s. Schmid studied Visual Communication at Fachhochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd and Berlin University of the Arts from 1976 to 1981. He began his career as a freelance critic and the publisher of Fotokritik, an iconoclastic and original contribution to West German photography. In the pages of Fotokritik and in his regular articles and lectures for other venues, Schmid argued articulately and at times vehemently against prevailing, predominantly conservative notions of ‘art photography’ and in favour of a broad, encompassing critique of photography as a form of cultural practice. After ceasing publication of Fotokritik in 1987, Schmid focused on his own art production, based primarily on found photography and public image sources. Living near one of the largest flea markets in Berlin, he had already amassed a rich, deep, and varied collection of vernacular photography which formed the raw material for many of his works.
I have always been open to accidental encounters; many of my works react to something I find or to a situation I find myself in.
