Hannes Schmid
American Myth: Paintings and Photographs
September 8 – October 14, 2018
Hannes Schmid’s work as a professional photographer is well known. His career began in the 1960s with photo essays documenting travels in Africa and Asia. In the 1970s and early 1980s Schmid emerged as one of the world’s most widely reproduced rock and roll photographers, turning out iconic images of the best known stars of the day. His photographs of Roxy Music, Van Halen, Motorhead, AC/DC, Kraftwork, Kiss, ABBA, The Who, Paul McCartney, The Police, Blondie, et al. are instantly recognizable.
After an award-winnng decade working in fashion photography, shooting first for German Vogue, Armani, Kenzo and Benneton, Schmid was hired by the Leo Burnett advertising agency to reimagine the Marlboro Man. Thus Schmid, who is Swiss, took a place alongside a small number other photographers – Sam Abell, Jim Krantz – in defining an American icon. In addition to their use in magazine and billboard advertizing, Schmid’s photographs for Marlboro have been appropriated by Richard Prince, most notably in Prince’s exhibition at the 2003 Venice Biennale.
In the late 1990s Schmid began to paint meticulous photorealistic reinterpretations of his Marlboro photography as a means of reclaiming his commerical work in service to his own artistic vison, not to mention as a way to sidestep the constraints copyright law placed on his use of his own work. In many ways, reflexive as these issues tend to be, Schmid was forced to deal with questions similar to those that Prince deals with in his appropriation of artists such as Schmid. Given the difficulties of a Swiss citizen mounting legal challenges in the United States, Schmid sidesteped actions to curtail Prince’s use of his images.
The current exhibition includes, in addition to paintings, black and white prints of work that was previously known only in it’s full-color commerial form.
Recently, Hannes Schmid has been invoved in humanitarian work rebuilding communities in Cambodia, supporting his philanthropic endeavors through film and photography.