2021: Sabine Schmidt

Sabine Schmidt, of Fayetteville, holds an MA in American Studies from the Universität Hamburg and an MFA in literary translation from the University of Arkansas. Her photography and writing have appeared in publications including National Geographic and Rolling Stone Germany. In 2017, she received an installation commission from the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute. She won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council in 2018. Remote Access: Small Public Libraries in Arkansas, a book of photography and essays co-authored with Don House, will be published by the University of Arkansas Press in August 2021.

From Sabine:

“My photographic body of work is known for its emphasis on place, memory, and the overlooked and forgotten. My approach to photography is inspired by psychogeography, an art philosophy first formulated in Europe in the 1950s. Its goal is to uncover layers of history through paying attention to places and buildings that hold the memory of previous generations. I want to honor the teachers and students of the vanished Black schools in Parkin, Cotton Plant, and Menifee. I want to honor the young men who burned to death in their locked dorm at the Negro Boys Industrial School in Wrightsville in 1959. There are so many others, and I will never be able to do them justice, but I see this project as a beginning, as a series of small acts of remembrance and respect.”