Oskar Schmidt analyzes, dissects, and restages certain aspects of photo history in his The American Series. It begins with the photographs of Walker Evans for the U. S. Farm Security Administration (FSA) in the 1930s, during the Great Depression in the South of the USA. In his The American Series, Schmidt takes on these icons of classic documentary photography of the past decades, re-creates the scenery of Evan’s photographs in his studio, and photographs them anew with a large format camera. Oskar Schmidt’s astute and playful investigation of reality and its likeness, transforms a historic, social-documentary concept in his present-day artist’s studio. From the weathered wood and the artifacts of a spare life, to the dust in the bowl, the photographs seem to resemble their American relatives. And yet, they are constructions in the artist’s studio. Sceneries, which, compared to their precursors, inhabit a variation of the disposition or the perspective, and therefore provoke a look on the construction of history, as well as photography.
Oskar Schmidt (b. 1977 in Erlabrunn, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. In 2014 Schmidt has been nominated for the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards. He won the Marion Ermer Award 2013 and the C/O Berlin Talents Award 2009. Selected exhibitions: 2014: Huis Marseille Photobook Marathon, Huis Marseille, Amsterdam; The Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards, Paris, New York, Los Angeles; Fotografie: International. Video, Mixed Media, Daimler Art Collection Stuttgart; Conceptual and Applied III: Surfaces and Pattern, Daimler Contemporary Berlin; 2013: Marion Ermer Award 2013, Neues Museum Weimar; Crossing Views, Marburger Kunstverein; 2012: Überall und Nirgends, Reydan Weiss Collection, Villa Jauss, Obersdorf; 2011: Leipzig. Fotografie seit 1839, Museum für Bildende Künste Leipzig; Recent Photography from Leipzig, Zabludowicz Collection New York; 2010: Art Collection Deutsche Börse – Talents 2009, Deutsche Börse AG, Frankfurt/Main; Hab und Gut, Kunsthalle Rostock; The Library of Babel, Zabludowicz Collection, London; 2009: Wiedergängerinnen, C/O Berlin, Altes Postfuhramt; Revenants, Goethe-Institut, Washington DC.
FESTIVAL
Paris Photo Los Angeles
May 1st – 3rd, 2015
Scheublein + Bak
Paramount Pictures Studios
Los Angeles
780 N. Gower Street
Los Angeles, CA 90038
United States
