Marian Schmidt (b. 1945) is a Polish
photographer and founder of the humanist photography renewal in Poland. He is
considered by many - next to Henri Cartier-Bresson - as a master of image
composition. He believes that the most important content in photography is
visual poetry and transcendence, thus his admiration for Edouard Boubat and
Paul Caponigro.
Born in Żyardów he spent his childhood
in Venezuela. He went to the US to study mathematics at the University of
California, Berkeley and later at Brandeis University, where he obtained his
Ph.D. in 1969. He resigned from an academic and research career to devote
himself to photography and films. He also studied phenomenology of
music with the conductor Sergiu Celibidache in France in the 1980’s.
He considers that spiritual development
and a pure way of seeing, without intelectual interferences, are essential for
a photographer to express visual poetry. He acknowledges Jiddu Krishnamurti and
Hermann Hesse as the greatest influences on his life and creative work.
He has extensively travelled in three
continents.
He is the author of three books:
“Hommes de science”, Ed. Hermann, Paris 1990; “Marian Schmidt” (introduction by
Edouard Boubat), Cercle
d’art, Paris 1994; “Unusual conversations
with Father Jan Twardowski”, Prószyński i
s-ka, Warsaw 2000.
He has had over sixty prestigious
photographic exhibitions in New York, Paris, Berlin, London, Tokyo, Zurich,
Charleroi. Venice, Solms, Dresden, Fort-de-France, Knokke-Heist, Warsaw,
Kraków, Gdańsk, Poznań, Szczecin, Katowice, Bielsko-Biała and in his home town
of Żyardów. His photographs are in the collections of museums, institutions and
private collectors in Belgium, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Mexico, Poland,
Switzerland and the United States.
He lived in the US and France where he
worked for the photo agencies Black Star and Rapho. He now lives in Poland. He
is a lecturer and the director of the Warsaw School of Photography. He also
taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań and at the National Film School in
Łódż where he obtained his habilitation in artistic photography in 2002.
All images ©
Marian Schmidt
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