Waffenruhe

Waffenruhe (Ceasefire) is Michael Schmidt's stark portrait of a divided Berlin on the eve of reunification, and one of the most influential photobooks of the twentieth century.

First published in 1987 by the Berlin house Dirk Nishen Verlag, the book pairs Schmidt's high-contrast black-and-white photographs of the city's checkpoints, borderlands and anonymous residents with a text by the writer and theatre director Einar Schleef. Rather than document Berlin directly, Schmidt works through unexpected juxtaposition and abrupt sequencing to evoke a generation's sense of rupture and dystopia in the shadow of the Wall. The original edition sold out quickly and became difficult to find; this edition, published by Koenig Books in 2018, returns the book to print for the first time in three decades.

Schmidt (1945-2014) was a self-taught Berlin photographer whose books, including U-NI-TY, Berlin nach 45 and Lebensmittel, are central to postwar German photography. His work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Haus der Kunst, Munich, and Waffenruhe remains the touchstone of his sustained engagement with Berlin's fractured identity.