In September 2009 Martin Parr sent me his VIP pass to the Berlin Art Forum, that he had recently received and knew full well, he would be unable to attend. I saw this as an opportunity to visit the fair and take photos in the spirit of Martin Parr. I was to be Martin Parr for the 23rd September. For those that know anything about my work, this must be a surprise, as my career in the art world is based entirely on orchestrating other people’s photographs.
I then invited Martin to be Joachim Schmid, and he decided to trawl through the “Martin Parr, We Love You” group on Flickr. This was established a few years ago as a forum for photographers who had been seemingly influenced by his photographic language. So in the spirit of Joachim Schmid, Martin looked for the most “Parr-like” images. The resulting two sets of images are what you will find on the pages of Joachim Schmid is Martin Parr · Martin Parr is Joachim Schmid.