Photography as Ethical Sketch – The Photographic Work of Andre Schmidt
Between documentary gaze, visual reference, and quiet resistance.
For Andre Schmidt, photography has never been merely a medium; from an early age, it was a subject of study. Growing up with a father who, as a financially equipped amateur photographer, had access to high-end camera equipment, Schmidt was handed SLR cameras from Porst and Nikon as a child – not as a means of self-expression, but as a tool for observation. “For a long time, I didn’t actively take photographs,” he says. “I just absorbed everything first – how my father worked, how he thought, how he staged things.”
Already during his school years, Schmidt gained access to a black-and-white darkroom, where he developed his own prints. The technical knowledge came early – as did the insight that analogue processes could be translated into the digital realm. As early as 1995, he began scanning analogue photographs – an early encounter with digital image editing, long before Photoshop became widely available.
Sketch, Study, Expression
Despite these foundations, Schmidt does not see himself as a pure photographer. For him, photography is often a sketch, a visual notebook, a draft for later painterly work. This transition is particularly evident in his nature photography: macro or telephoto images of animals, textures, or light situations that feel like fragments of a larger coherence. “Photography is sometimes like painting with light,” he says – yet it becomes autonomous when it documents that which eludes painting: movement, chance, encounter.
Thus, his photographic work is understood as a complement to painting, but not as mere preliminary material. They are different modes of seeing – united by shared ethical ground.
Looking at Suffering
“I wish I were more of a war photographer when it comes to animal suffering – but I can't take it,” says Schmidt. The statement reveals much about the inner conflict embedded in his ethically motivated photography. The desire to document violence stands in tension with his own vulnerability. And it is precisely this tension that makes Schmidt’s photographic stance so affecting: he wants to look – but not instrumentalise.
Although he has not yet published consistent photographic series, his Instagram account @kunstundkulturkomitee contains a diverse collection: documentary shots from activism, macro studies of nature, portraits of casual intimacy – a fragmentary, yet sincere body of work in progress.
Future Focus: Street Photography
Schmidt currently sees himself on a path towards street photography. Photographing people had long been a quiet yearning – now it is becoming real. His interest lies not in spectacle, but in the in-between: social texture, unposed moments, touches without theatricality.
“I’ve worked too little in series,” he says with self-critical clarity. Yet it is precisely this absence that defines the appeal of his photographic archive: it is not conceptually overdetermined, but rather an ongoing process of observation – open, vulnerable, fragmentary. And therein lies its strength.