The German photographer Michael Schmidt has died, aged 68, of cancer, three days after winning the Prix Pictet for his epic series Lebensmittel (Foodstuffs), which took seven years to complete and which explores global food production in the relentlessly monochrome style that had become Schmidt's signature. A selection of images from the series is on show at the Prix Pictet exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The French photographer Luc Delahaye, winner of last year's Pictet prize (for photography addressing sustainability and environmental issues) and one of this year's judges, said of Schmidt's work: "His language is a language of precision and his tool is the most simple one: a small, 35mm camera, and a few rolls of films. His pictures look simple at first glance, and their anti-sentimentality, their refusal of all the tricks of the usual seduction, their concision and their clarity, give them great efficiency. They show what they show but they manage to retain an opacity, a mystery, and they become a support for our imagination."
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