Joachim Schmid, artist
Other People’s Photographs, 96 print-on-demand books, self-published, 2008-2011
Other People’s Photographs is a series of 96 different books that explore patterns and themes in what amateur photographers are posting every day to sites such as Flickr.
On which fields of knowledge are you focused?
Visual culture.
Could you identify some constants in your work?
Pattern recognition.
How did you find out about Aby Warburg’s work?
Art historians‘ response to my work.
How would you define an Atlas?
For definitions please check the dictionary.
Atlas as a conceptual, formal and mnemonic device; do you use it in your work?
I guess I do.
Do you know about the existence of Mnemotechnics?
I heard about it.
Which mnemonic system guides the organization of your material?
My own intuition and the logic inherent in the material I work with.
Are there visual and emotional formulas (pathosformeln) in your project?
None I know of.
In your work, do you identify formal or conceptual recurrences such as repetitions and disruption,distance and proximity, identity and migration, conflict and colonization?
I identified patterns in popular photographic pratice.
In your work, what is the balance between image and text?
Other People’s Photographs is a photographic project. The only textual part are the names of the 96 categories (identical with the titles of the 96 volumes).
Are there more topics of interest that we haven’t pinned down? We’re interested in knowing your opinion!
Why is everybody always supposed to have an opinion?
Joachim Schmid is an artist who has been working with found photographs and texts since the early 1980s. He published numerous artist books. His work has been exhibited internationally and is included in numerous collections. For more detailed information please visit