In 2024, the Michael Schmidt Archive was transferred to the Museum Folkwang in Essen as a long term loan. Throughout his life, Michael Schmidt was connected to this museum and to the photographic institutions based in Essen through exhibition and collecting activities, scholarship programs, and teaching. The archive comprises not only an extensive compilation of five key bodies of work by the photographer from all periods of his career, from his early beginnings to his final 177 part work Lebensmittel (2012), but also all negatives and contact sheets, 2,000 exhibition prints, and more than 20,000 working and test prints. Dummies for book projects, correspondence, personal documents, and Michael Schmidt’s private library, consisting of around 1,000 monographs, 300 catalogs, and 400 magazines, are also part of the holdings.

This collection forms the starting point at the Museum Folkwang for further research and presentation of Michael Schmidt’s work in the national and international context.

The contact person for the Michael Schmidt Archive at the Museum Folkwang is Matthias Gründig:
T +49 201 8845 136
matthias.gruendig@museum-folkwang.essen.de