Joachim Schmidt is a Berlin based critic and conceptual Artist. Schmidt collects and re-purposes photographs that other people have thrown away. Schmidt takes these discarded, ripped, and mundane photographs, and creates artwork that is thought provoking and captivating. Joachim is extremely passionate for his art/photography work, Schmid has stated himself that he is “completely obsessed with photography”, He suspects that “few people in the world have looked at more photographs” than he has. At one point he counted: he had looked at 10,000 photographs in one day alone. And he has maintained his manic pace since embarking on his career as a “professional looker” in the 1980s.

One of Schmidt’s first projects was ‘Pictures from the Street’ (Bilder von der Straße, in German) which ranged from the years 1982-2012. For this one, he would keep and classify each and every photograph (or fragment of a photograph) that he found in a public space. (The collection had more than 900 pieces at one time). If a photograph had been ripped to pieces, he re-assembled what he could and mounted it as a scientist would. All pieces of this collection are arranged and displayed on identical sheets of archival paper, in chronological order, noting the date and place where each was found. It is almost impossible to look at this collection and not try to imagine stories about who is pictured, and who owned the photo, and why the photos were thrown away.