Joachim Schmid gathers (collects for his own use) vernacular photography to compile books of photographs which have been forgotten, lost or discarded (anti-museum) encouraging people to reconsider how photography and collecting are cultural practices and questions the value of photographs to people. His visual survey of snapshot photography in the 20th century includes postcards and studio prints. With flea market finds, Schmid notes that he is about a generation behind. Online photographs are instantly there, with photographs from around the world being uploaded in a pattern through the 24hour period.
Schmid produced several books, 96 cataloguing mundane finds such as feet, airline meals, coffee - the sort which end up on social media. Schmid questions why we all take the same photo and who taught us? Perhaps this is because they work? It portrays a family who is functioning as society expects and painting a picture of people being OK. He examines family photography through the generations and worldwide. He uses a book format because it doesn't rely on electricity or internet access to look at it and it means more to people if they can physically hold it. Their attention span is longer with a book.
His series on discarded photographs, the subject of several books, stopped when photography became digital. Schmid reflects on the physical role of the photograph, collecting destroyed, often violently, and questions their relationship with another person, although this is never revealed to him or his readers. He explains that some photos were cherished which is shown by the marks or fading on them. These are as important as the destroyed images. In Photographic Garbage Survey Project (1996-7) he included a street map which he walked over several days, pinpointing the location and type of photograph found as if part of a study, comparing the number and type of each major cities' discarded photographs.
Schmid refers to the amount of student photographers and number of images already out there. We need to look at and make sense of the existing images. Perhaps one question that should be asked is what do people not photograph? What is the relationship between memory and photography? Is it the event or the photograph that is remembered?
Looking through the book list of Joachim Scmid, the title "X marks the spot" (2013) caught my eye. In this book, Schmid notes that tourists visit the road where the assassination of John F Kennedy took place. Tourists run into the road to have their picture taken on the X. A hidden security camera mounted where the assassinator stood captures their images.
Exercise 2.1 The artist as curator
Bring together a series of 12 images (a typology) in which a particular motif appears again and again. Use found images from a family album or online photos. Select an appropriate way to display your images - grid, animated slide show or single images.Following on from the research of Joachim Schmid's work, my initial ideas included life events such as weddings, Christenings, family holiday activities such as eating an ice cream, the seaside, boating lakes, children on the first day back to school in September, birthday parties, collecting awards, new car, new pet.
I decided to look at "new bike day" as I could start off the collection from my archive. Over the last few years I had 3 bikes and my husband had taken pictures on his phone to share with friends on social media. All 3 showed the bike and me in the same position. Even the one of our son was similar. I asked friends on social media if they could share theirs (the criteria being people with their new bike, not riding it.) Hoping to keep this to people I know, I trawled friends' social media pages and found a few more.
A search of google images showed people worldwide in similar poses! Instagram provided the best pictures with its #newbikeday (52,174 posts although not all met my criteria)
#newbikedayisthebestday (567)
#newbikedayrocks (12)
On Facebook the use of #newbikeday shows several posts, some of which are duplicated on Instagram.
There are different styles of #newbikeday photos; on the bike, off the bike, in the shop, outside the home, in the landscape, bike in the air, bike ready to ride or being ridden. Plenty feature the bike and not the rider. I had one last square to fill so went through parent's family albums, remembering the different bikes we had as children for birthdays and Christmas. There were a handful of photos of them in the albums, but only of riding the bikes which didn't fit my criteria until my Mum remembered the last bike my brother had as a child. Being younger, there are more photo's of him on #newbikeday because she took more pictures towards the end of the 1980's.
I think the selection is representative of the photographs which are on the internet.All my images feature people I know.
This collection of "new bike day" images works as a grid because they use a similar typology. Photographers such as the Bernd and Hilla Becher used a grid to present us with industrialized images of coal mines and water towers. August Sander's portraits are typology arranged in a book. Ed Ruscha's Sunset Strip is typology images joined together like the road. Gillian Wearing's Masks. Thinking back to Strange and Familiar (curated by Martin Parr) the linear framed photographs are typology arranged by photographer but the theme is the same. Parr chose his categories for each photographer and exhibited photographs which fitted the exhibition title. Acting as a curator, the photographer selects images from existing ones rather than taking new photographs.
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Bibliography
Boothroyd, S. (2013) Open College of the Arts. An Interview with Joachim Schmid. Available at: https://weareoca.com/photography/an-interview-with-joachim-schmid/ last accessed 24/4/17
Divya Rao Heffley (n.d.) Carnegie Museum of Art: Urban Archaeology. The practice of Joachim Schmid. Available at: http://www.nowseethis.org/invisiblephoto/posts/678/essay/13 last accessed 24/4/17
Schmid (2013) X marks the spot. Available at: https://schmid.wordpress.com/works/x-marks-the-spot-2013/ last accessed 24/4/17
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