On the surface, his pictures appear to be factual documents of the world in which he moves, the city and the people he meets. But they are also the opposite. Even the exclusive black and white of his pictures is an artifice that creates distance between the photographed object and the photographer. The black and white demonstrates the autonomy of the images, because the photographed reality is different. In general, the artistic means used by Michael Schmidt are artificial, they do not serve the most appropriate representation of the photographed subject, deliberate blurring, stark differences between light and dark, but also demonstrative gray on gray, close-ups that isolate the object from its original context and inward-looking facial expressions and gestures of the people photographed. When Michael Schmidt takes a picture of the Wall in Berlin, it is not a picture about the exotic appeal of the Wall or a picture with political intentions, but a picture about Michael Schmidt.
Although Michael Schmidt’s pictures look so normal and everyday at first glance, they are radical in this sense. They are works of art because they are the expression of a philosophy and because they have poetry in their brittle aesthetics. Above all, however, they are works of art because they are experienced.
from: Dieter Hacker, FOTOHOF Info, issue 3/1988