Michael Schmidt (photographer)
Michael Schmidt (6 October 1945 – 24 May 2014) 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. Life and work Schmidt was born on 6 October 1945 in East Berlin,