Joachim Schmid: Searching and Finding. The Archive as an Artist's Quarry - Part II

The Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz is no longer only a collection of photographic reproductions of works of art, but considers itself – to paraphrase Joachim Schmid – as a scholar's quarry and a laboratory for the humanities. Here scholars can work not solely "with" the photographs as instruments of art historical research but also "on" the photographs themselves as social, material objects within the ecosystem of the archive. With this workshop the laboratory opens for an encounter beyond the boundaries of academic research: the Photothek's concern for the epistemological (but also aesthetic) potential of the anonymous, erratic mass of photographs accumulated sometimes intentionally, sometimes accidentally in functional photo archives meets Joachim Schmid's artistic practice and his interest in archival issues. In an experimental brain-storming Joachim Schmid will direct his artistic gaze to the Photothek's holdings offering an example of how the latent biographies of photographs in an archive can be activated.

Joachim Schmid is a Berlin based artist who has been working with found photographs since the early 1980s. He published over one hundred artist's books. His work has been exhibited internationally and is included in numerous collections. In 2007 Photoworks and Steidl published a comprehensive monograph Joachim Schmid Photoworks 1982–2007 on the occasion of his first retrospective exhibition. In 2012 Johan & Levi Editore edited the book Joachim Schmid e le fotografie degli altri (Joachim Schmid and Other People's Photographs) on the occasion of an exhibition at Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea (MuFoCo) in Cinisello Balsamo, Milan.

On his biography and work see https://schmid.wordpress.com/.