Adrian Searle: Out of Sight

Almost none of Michael Schmidt's photographs aim for this kind of status, except as a record of things the eye has seen. Thawing snow in the street, sallow light, stretches of weeds and waste ground, a face, wallpaper or a shower curtain: the things Schmidt photographs often appear random or meaningless. Taken together, they become a fugue.

Not long after he had started wandering his native Berlin with a borrowed camera, Schmidt joined a club for amateur photographers. He observed of his fellow hobbyists: "When I took pictures of rain, it looked like rain. When they took pictures of it, it looked like glass pearls." Knowing that rain is rain, and not pearls, is important. It's one historical fact we can be certain of.