Inner visions
Little slices of inner visions
Designers Digest about Thomas Schmidt and his medicalpicture project.
They are images that we all carry within, without realizing it. Images that laymen eyes find overwhelming. Above all, however, images with an almost devastating beauty.
Thomas Schmidt (49) is master over these images, and his treasure trove is called medicalpicture. Instead of keeping his wealth all to himself, however, he has placed it on the net. Already, four year’s after setting it up, this worldwide accessible data bank contains over 100.000 exclusive pictures from the fields of health, medicine and pharmacy. The number increases daily.
Thomas Schmidt has found himself in these all-too-human inner visions; they have allowed him to realize a decade-old longing: to create ‘a (nearly) web-based life, independent from ex-wives, employers and work spaces, staff and other complications’. medicalpicture is the outcome of a photographer’s active life, where the essence, so to speak, has been banned to film and storage chips. Before Schmidt turned his eye inwards, taking in the smallest, almost invisible details, he turned his lens to some of the greats in our world: from Alfred Herrhausen to Edzard Reuter. All this while still remaining an adamant anarchist, student of sociology and photographer of the people.
‘I love my pictures’, Schmidt says. ‘And my server’. This statement contains more than just the refined irony with which he tries to approach life’s injustices. The confusing aesthetics, that can only be produced by something like corrosive, red-coloured little veins, demands more than just a superficial glance. One might be disgusted by the sight – or seduced. ‘I would love to do an exhibition of our histopathological pictures’, Schmidt says. ‘And produce them as one by two metre prints’. He elevates investigative, medical photography to a level where it should have been placed long ago: to that of an art from. His imageauthors love him for it. He loves them for it too.
This cross section of the small and large intestine, resembles corals that have turned to stone, nestled together for millions of years. The size of the section is both unusual and rare. The image belongs to medicalpicture’s histopathological collection.
‘Anatomy is necessary, but nix easy’ says Professor Johannes Lang, the world-renowned pathologist, whose collection includes this image of a section of the brain. Lang’s unique life work is managed by medicalpicture.
Some might consider this a work of art suitable for adoring the walls of a design agency. Others might recognize a three dimensional view of the bloodstream carrying along blood cells in an 3D illustration by Felix Stark.
Maybe only the eyes of a doctor are able to really recognize this tangle of little veins. It shows the blood supply to the human cerebellum made visible and permanent by a corrosive preparation. The motif comes from the Lang collection by medicalpicture.
An unreal, mystical being from a distant galaxy? Or simply a human lung as presented by Isabel Christensen? The “best german medical illustrator” as Thomas Schmidt calls her, also works for medicalpicture.