Bologna Exhibition Update

The ongoing exhibition at P420 was prolongated for another month until April 10th.
Mre reviews were published recently, “Riflettere sulle immagini. Le fotografie di Joachim Schmid a Bologna” by Giulia De Sanctis in Artribune, “Schmid rende arte la fotografia: la sua mostra a Bologna” by Paola Naldi in la Repubblica, and “Nessuna nuova fotografia, finché tutte quelle esistenti non siano state utilizzate” by Bruna Giordano on exibart.

The Last Days of Mr T

For the first time we heard of “alternative facts” in January 2017. It was a truely shocking revelation which triggered my research into the matter. Not much later I published my findings in a small booklet presenting an alternative number of Two Hundred Alternative Facts about Mr T. As announced, this booklet is only available as long as Mr T is in office. Now that Mr T’s days in office are numbered it’s your last chance to get one of the few copies left. The remainig copies will be shredded on January 20th, 2021 at 6pm CET.

Shipping delays

Collectors ordering books please note that due to the ongoing pandemic there may be substantial delays in the postal service. The service in Germany and to most European countries is more or less regular but there are substantial disruptions in overseas services. For up to date details please check the Deutsche Post site.

Books for free!

Books are great. What’s better than books? Free books! Here’s your chance: although I am totally subscribed to the idea I know there are moments when books are not so great. One of these moments is when you are moving house. That’s what I’ll do soon. Before moving I’d love to lose weight, and therefore I’ll give away books for free.
This is how it works: Order a book and you’ll get another book for free. Any book order will come with an extra copy of a randomly chosen book from the available stock. This is a one-time offer, effective immediately and expiring on December 15. Buy one, get two. Buy two, get three. Buy now. Help me clear my shelves by filling yours. It’ll make me a happy man when moving house.

The Data Thing

Everyone’s mailbox is clogged these days with messages sent by absolutely every entity we ever were in contact with. That’s because the European authorities released some small print nobody really understands. To avoid trouble we all need to assert that we are the good guys. We are the ones who do neither collect nor sell data (it’s true, as far as I am concerned). It seems that we risk being sued by ruthless lawyers during hate week if we do not send such statements to just about everyone we ever were in contact with. Done.
The only data I collect are the email addresses of people who subscribed to my site at one point. I do not share these with anyone, not for free, not for money, not for candy, and not for sex. The addresses I collected are kept in a locked ebony casket; the gilded key for this is well hidden in a vault known only to me. If you should wish your address to be removed from my collection, just click the unsubscribe link that should be somewhere down there; if it isn’t send me a teeny weeny email and my staff will get out the erasers immediately.
Once you’re at it you may also consider to get rid of your telescreens and to drop your social media accounts in the memory hole.
I am sending best wishes to all of you from Shanghai where I am working for some months on a new project, fingerprinted, under constant video surveillance, and with very limited internet access. (It’s not called work by the way; if I’d call it work I might be back home much sooner than expected.) Stay tuned and you’ll learn about the results one day. My site is the only place where you find regular updates about my work by the way.
Facebook site deleted? Yes. Facebook account deleted? Yes.
Have a nice day. Skip hate week.

Paris Gallery Update

With immediate effect I discontinued my collaboration with Galerie Alain Gutharc in Paris. Collectors who consider buying artwork from the gallery are advised that I am no longer represented by the gallery. The gallery is no longer authorized to sell any of my works. Collectors who acquired work by me from this gallery in the past are informed that I may not have been paid for those works.

New listings of publications, new online shop

With the increasing number of books I have been making during the past years and with the various places where to find information about these books, things have become a bit confusing – time for a new presentation. All the printed matter I published during my career will be listed in individual posts on this site from now on, properly described, tagged and easily searchable. Interested parties who wish to purchase any books can do this through my new online shop.

ABCED

“I guess maybe I woke up in a cold sweat once and just had this light bulb go off of doing a book of some sort.”
This is how Ed Ruscha, in a 2004 interview, recalled the events that led him to start creating books. The books he started making half a century ago were influential for generations of artists. To honour his contribution to the artist book, members of ABC Artists’ Books Cooperative are launching ABCED in Autumn 2012. ABCED is a multi-volume book project created on the occasion of Ed Ruscha’s 75th birthday, consisting of 33 books by 24 artists. The project will be launched simultaneously in multiple venues on both sides of the Atlantic in the final weeks of September:
Offprint Amsterdam, 20–23 September
The London Art Book Fair, 21–23 September
The New York Art Book Fair, 27–30 September.
My books Borrowed and Replicated are part of this project.
My new series Authentic Replica is based on a selection of images from these books.

Bilder von der Straße


^ No. 1000, Gallipoli, March 2012

I am pleased to announce that my thirty-year project Bilder von der Straße (Pictures from the Street) was completed recently. I decided to discontinue the work after one thousand findings. The project began in August 1982 and ended in March 2012. During this time I picked up one thousand lost or abandoned photographs from the world’s pavements. The complete work is now available in book form.
Although the collection has been exhibited widely, this is the first time it is printed as a complete set. Published in four volumes, the books present every found photograph or its fragments in their original size and in the chronological order they were discovered. No intervention has taken place except for the inclusion of the date and location where each picture was found. As well as providing a record of my travels, the books document people’s use and abuse of photographs, with almost all the photographs in the collection depicting people and more than half of these being ripped or defaced in some way.