In May 2008, I was pleased to include Joachim Schmid in The Ubiquitous Image, a show I curated for the New York Photo Festival in which I brought together artists exploring the reproduction and dissemination of photographs—the increasing pace with which images are released into the world and what it means to swim in a sea of images, whether in print or online. Schmid has been called "something of an inside secret in photography despite over a decade of international exhibitions." He has been a critic and a publisher as well as an artist, and has worked with found imagery since the early 1980s. Schmid's collection of Photographs from the Street has been exhibited worldwide, most recently in Arles. He is a staunchly committed practitioner of the Duchampian art of the found image. While Schmid is someone who has self-published throughout his career, this set of print-on-demand books is the first time he has yoked the power of digital self-publishing to his ends.

Schmid has been widely quoted as declaring, "No new photography until all the old photography has been used up!" In keeping with this idea, Schmid's book series Other People's Photographs is comprised of small square books published on demand. Each book features thirty-two of exactly what the series title promises: other people's photographs, all drawn from the likes of MySpace, Flickr, and Photobucket. The images he brings together have seemingly arbitrary themes, like Big Fish (people holding, well... big fish) and Flashing (self-portraits taken in the mirror with the flash on). As Schmid said in a recent interview, "they work on a very strange register."¹

While Schmid promises a hundred volumes of Other People's Photographs, there are ten titles available to date. Five of the titles—Big Fish, Flashing, On the Road, Self, and Sites—are available through Aperture's Curated Collection. These idiosyncratic and delightful books are excellent case studies of the seemingly universal typologies of vernacular photography. They are perfect for connoisseurs of the likes of Hans Peter Feldman, Useful Photography, Richard Prince, and others who view photographs as the ultimate readymade.

—LAM

Flashing
Targeting a different kind of ubiquitous photography—one that literally gives face to the internet—this volume documents pictures that accompany personal ads and networking-site profiles, a form of self portraiture Schmid dubs "flashing." Whether in head or full body shots, showing faces or washing them out with the flash, the people captured here portray themselves again and again with what is at hand: a digital camera and a mirror.

¹Geoffrey Batchen, "Books, Photographs, and Personal Histories: Susan Meiselas and Joachim Schmid in conversation with Geoffrey Batchen," Art on Paper, January/February 2009, pp. 68–75.