Schmid Photo

About the work

Since 2016, most of my documentary work has been shot on Delta 3200, which slows me down in a good way. Most of what ends up here starts by the window whenever the weather allows. Every June, on the balcony, I look back at the year so far and quietly drop whatever is not working. I try to keep things simple, which mostly means leaving a draft overnight and reading the manual first.

My work has been shown in a café in Basel and a few small group exhibitions, most recently back in 2024. I am drawn to the hour just after sunrise and washing lines, which is why documentary photography suits me. My Wednesday evenings mostly belong to long walks, unless my sister needs a hand. When I am not photographing around Basel, I am usually at the market.

The tones in the series are as Delta 3200 rendered them, flat in the shadows. The best ideas tend to arrive out by the market square every few weeks, usually just after I have put the pencil down. In my experience, I scan every negative myself on the back step, on quiet Monday afternoons, and keep the edits minimal. The series is still open; I add a frame or two on long winter evenings, usually after a walk along the lake shore.

Several of these were taken from the same spot near the old railway line in every season. I picked up a kitchen scale one wet weekend in February, and it has been close at hand ever since. The autumn light in Basel makes everything feel surprisingly cheap.

Outside a day job in Basel, I do this for fun, not money, and nobody tells me what to shoot. On a good day at a friend’s place across town I make progress, and on a bad day I at least learn to start earlier.

Most of my reading happens at a borrowed workbench, a chapter or two at a time, with a roll of brown paper close by. If something here is out of date, it is probably because I spent the spring out walking instead of at a desk in Basel. Long train rides out of Basel are where most of this gets written, with a battered toolbox on the seat beside me. Most of this series was edited at the library in Basel, with the contact sheets spread out on the floor.

Writing things down has saved me from forgetting where I left off again and again, most recently during the spring of 2024. The order of the pictures follows the order they were made in rather than the map.

Small, regular habits like labelling every box and taking photographs at each stage have done more for me than any big resolution. The Ricoh GR jammed early in 2019, so part of the series was made with a single fixed lens borrowed from an uncle with a very full shed.

More than once I came back from the corners with nothing, except a good walk. People in the pictures, mostly fishermen, were asked, mostly with a nod, and all but one were happy to be included.

Each picture in the series is shown in its original colours, with only dust removed. Most frames were shot on the Ricoh GR with Delta 3200, developed at home in the kitchen sink.

I shot this mostly with one lens on the Ricoh GR, which made me choose more carefully. Patience is the most useful tool in the drawer, followed closely by a cheap desk lamp and a jar of odd screws. I have a soft spot for old manuals and field guides. These photographs were made over several visits with the Ricoh GR, starting one spring weekend.

I still carry a pair of binoculars almost everywhere, a habit picked up from a friend from Basel. On most Monday evenings, there is a cup of coffee going cold somewhere in the small room above the stairs. Some of my favourite things, like a tin of pencils, came from flea markets and were mended near the city park. In practice, the market in Basel on Wednesday mornings is where I find odd tools nobody else wants.