Schmidt, Jutta

Jutta Schmidt, Dortmund, Germany

Completed a classical photographer's training and initially worked as a photojournalist. After many years of practice as a photographer in the fields of advertising, people and fashion, she studied "New Artistic Media" in Saarbrücken with a focus on photography and was a master student of Ulrike Rosenbach and Else Gabriel.
For ten years she directed the photo studios of the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste/Saar.
Today she lives and works as an artist and lecturer and art teacher in the Ruhr area.
She has received several awards for her artistic photo series that deal with everyday life, social realities and their patterns and codes.

Free swimmer

The numerous closures of public outdoor pools, give rise to public discussion in many places. The spacious outdoor pool areas are being reduced to centrally located, mostly smaller and comparatively high-priced fun pools.
Against the background of the bathing culture, which has its origins in antiquity and has been an expression of the sophistication of a society in all cultures up to the present day, the question arises as to whether the tendency towards a fun bathing society, whose focus has long since changed from the sporting idea of the former "Trimm dich" wave to more expensive and clearly more passive water entertainment, is not programmatic for what can be observed in our society as a whole.
In my work "Freischwimmer" I am particularly concerned with the collective experience of the generation of open-air pool visitors in the heyday of German open-air pool culture, the 1970s and 1980s.
The aspect of memory, as well as the identity-forming function of the collectively experienced leisure pleasure are in the foreground. I am interested in seeing the open-air swimming pool as a place of social and personal imprinting, a cosmos of its own in which codes of behavior and disciplines are experienced and learned.
Against the background of my own experiences, I asked people from my generation for their memories. I picked out seven stories from different ages between 5 and 15 years and tell with them also the story of growing up. The photo series shows stagings, each of which refers to a specific memory. But only the title of the picture gives a reference to what actually happened. The empty and unreal backdrop leaves room for the viewer's projections.

Image title: "In the evening I had a sunburn" (Jutta, 12)

Collections

K 4 Gallery Saarbrücken
Sports World, Dortmund
Municipal Clinic, Dortmund

Books

"Kittel, Kekse, Kultgebäck", Art around the bakery by Jutta Schmidt, ed.: Stromberg, 2011 (edition: 500)

"White Blood," A History of Sickness in Pictures by Jutta Schmidt, Ed.: Klinikum Dortmund gGmbH, 2010, (Edition: 2000)

"Vom Beckenrand", An exhibition course on the subject of outdoor swimming pools by Jutta Schmidt.
Ed.: BBS, Saarbrücken, 2009, (Edition: 1000)