Seesener Straße

The photographer has been portraying people on Seesener Straße in Berlin's Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district since 2020. Be it seniors, craftspeople, mothers or fathers, tourists or hobby gardeners – life out of doors is colourful. His work documents places where people live, work, pass on by, enter into conversations and, even in times of corona, remain active, self-confident and communicative.

LFI:What is it that fascinates you about the hustle and bustle in this part of Berlin?
Andreas Schmidt: The mundaneness! Living and working, trading, crafts, industry, lingering, greetings and farewells, the quiet and the loudness. It's the same kind of stuff I know and like about my own life. Speaking with people, I quickly discover more: the shy family man, who is also a SAP (systems, applications, and products) consultant; the wild rocker, who works as a radio moderator; the well-tailored suit that will be part of the outfit of a future teaching student; the builder, who is enthusiastic about digital photography, and is open for suggestions about where to get a micro SD card close by. Behind each of the photos, I experienced a pleasant encounter and a little story.

What criteria do you use to choose your motifs? What kind of situations incite you to push the trigger?
I find photography so fascinating precisely because of the creative aspect: I put together an image that I never imagined would become reality a few minutes later – intuition precedes my first decisive impulse. I still thoroughly enjoy looking, experiencing surprises, perceiving structures, feelings and movement; and then, remaining conscious of the motif I've discovered. Pushing the trigger is just as much a part of it all as looking at the results.

Do you have any photographic role models?
Yes, I have many – in particular, people who got going and actively approached people, while taking photographs! Henri Cartier-Bresson; stern magazine photographers of the sixties and seventies; Ara Güler, Evelyn Richter, Harald Hauswald, Jim Rakete, Barbara Klemm, and Anton Corbijn; as well as the imagery of magazines, such as the Süddeutsche Zeitung and brand eins. And many great colleagues who cavort around on Instagram and such.
I find it even more important, however, to be your own role model, and to be engaged with your own results. So I would give every photographer the unasked-for advice that they repeatedly look at their own pictures; that they turn them around 180 degrees; that they examine the graphic design of the image closely; and that they ask themselves: “Is there calm, strength and clarity in what I've produced?”

What was working with the Leica M-P like?
I took this series with the M-P (Typ 240) and the Summilux-M 50mm f/1.4 ASPH, with open aperture. I take 95% of my pictures with this “realistic” 50mm focal length. I almost always carry around this combination, as well as one, two and three additional lenses, from 28 to 90mm. This way, I can take pictures in many moments of my life, quite by chance. I like Leica's reduced, clear and powerful industrial design. With Leica M cameras and lenses, I can craft my work in a clean, calm and relaxed manner. Leica lenses are phenomenally good – with a very beautiful bokeh and outstanding sharpness, right to the corners of the image. That becomes particularly evident in the prints that I can produce in up to 50 x 75 cm. What I really appreciate about the M system is that I can easily combine digital and analogue work. If I want the raw, original quality of analogue photography, I use the analogue M6 instead of the digital M-P. Just pop in the film and off we go!