Author of now-classic photobooks such as Waffenruhe and Berlin-Wedding, Berlin-based photographer Michael Schmidt (1945-2014) was acclaimed in his lifetime for his black-and-white, documentary-style depictions of his native city.
Schmidt was born on 6 October 1945 in East Berlin, five months after the German surrender. His family crossed to West Berlin before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. His earliest series on Berlin, Stadtlandschaft (Urban Landscapes) (1974-75) and Berlin, Stadtbilder (Berlin, Urban Images) (1976-80), established the idiom he would pursue for the rest of his life.
