Sabine Schmidt

I am a photographer and translator, working in two languages and cultures. My two cultural and linguistic identities also inform my photographic work: how I look for photos, how I create images, and what inspires me. I don’t feel completely and comfortably at home in either culture, which makes it easier to look at both from an unfamiliar angle.
Some photos are influenced by German ideas of what America is like. After many years in the U.S., I still experience an odd combination of recognition and surprise when I see a small-town motel or an abandoned prairie farm.
I am interested in the places people create, inhabit, and ultimately leave behind. I don’t show faces, but I‘m offering ways to imagine them, to wonder about the places, and to populate them with people and stories.
I look for the traces that remain when humans disappear from the built environment. Objects are left behind. Their function may be obvious or inexplicable, but they all hint at stories. Ever-resilient nature creeps back and begins to reshape what humans are no longer paying attention to. Geometry and color become composition elements the eye can focus on without being distracted by the presence of people. Clouds, fog, and flat afternoon light often help bring out the stillness I try to express in color film and digital photography. Soon someone may get in a car or leave a building and return human activity to the scene, but the photo holds the quiet moment.