On the occasion of his personal exhibition at Kunstmuseum Bern (2013), Hannes Schmid has decided to work on a retrospective publication. A large selection of his photographic works are included as well as a compilation of texts by Elisabeth Bronfen, Gail Buckland, Rainer Egloff, Matthias Frehner, Kornelia Imesch, Christiane Kuhlmann, and Ildegarda Scheidegger, which contextualize his work and address his position as a creative agent within photographic practice.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Kunstmuseum Bern, from March to July 2013.
Essentially self-taught, internationally-reknowned Swiss photographer Hannes Schmid (born 1946 in Zurich) has been active for decades in various fields of photography. He chose to preserve blurred the boundaries between commissioned projects and personal work very early, offering the viewer a somehow intimate and close-to-reality experience through his various images series.
By the late 1970s he focused on simultaneously documenting cannibal folk culture in Indonesia and the rock music scene, his interest spanning such different subjects because of their “intensity.” He spent almost a decade on tour with over 250 bands before entering the world of fashion and advertising photography. Schmid produced his famous icon–the Marlboro cowboy–later, reaching mass audiences as well as the contemporary art scene.
