WAFFENRUHE (NEW ENGLISH EDITION)

Michael Schmidt
WAFFENRUHE (NEW ENGLISH EDITION)

Photographs: Michael Schmidt

Text: Michael Schmidt

80 pages

Year: 2018

Comments: softcover, 30 by 26,5cm. English edition. facsimile edition published in 2018.

Michael Schmidt, winner of the 2014 Prix Pictet, is one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, not only in his native Germany. Using a slow-burn approach to documentary photography, he creates a new visual lexicon for every series he works on, whether it is Berlin streetscapes or European farmland. Schmidt’s unblinking realism is already influencing Europe’s next generation of photographers.

Waffenruhe, probably one of his best works, is a series of black and white images showing the landscapes, people and the architecture of Berlin just a few years before the fall of the Wall. He depicts a city that is isolated in decay, and its people with it.