What makes a legend? In a time of hyperexposure, is it associated with the way one’s face becomes forever ingrained in the public conscience? More than just a household name, do we aspire to become household brands? When concepts of the self collude with the commodification of individuality, does the goal of being perceived as ourselves outweigh the work and impact we create? Upon discovering Swiss-born artist Hannes Schmid, I pondered on what impact means within the current cultural landscape. A photographer who has photographed the likes of AC/DC, DRAM, The Who, Prince and ABBA; a hyperrealistic painter who has reinterpreted his most famous Marlboro Man imagery on canvas; and now an activist in Cambodia — each work spotlights someone else, a stark contrast from the artist-as-art state we currently live in. While his decades-long career has spanned across different periods and cultural atmospheres, one thing remains consistent: Hannes Schmid, the artist, does not portray himself as the subject to convey his worldviews, but as a facilitator who practices the idea of showing, not just telling. It was also the act of showing that brought 78-year-old Schmid back to Singapore this month, where he is currently exhibiting a selection of works at Appetite — the dining concept conceived by famed chef Ivan Brehm. Showcasing three defining bodies of work, “For Gods Only,” “Blackstage” and “Fashion & Wildlife”, Schmid catches up with Men’s Folio to talk creative process, shooting rockstars and creating art in the age of A.I.
In a series of intimate portraits of Chinese street opera performers layered with red calligraphy, “For Gods Only” offered a rarely shown look into a lost art that thrives during the Hungry Ghost Festival. For an art form that the living can at best only observe from a distance, how was Schmid able to gain access behind the velvet curtains? “I stumbled upon these performances back when Punggol was just starting up. I asked my wife, who is Singaporean, what this was, to which she replied ‘I don’t know’, and told me not to go. I took it as a sign to explore, take a closer look,” he recalls. To his surprise, what he saw was an elaborate performance staged for rows of empty plastic chairs. “As a Swiss, the idea of devoting one’s life to performing for empty chairs was unthinkable at the time. Don’t actors live for applause?” A mix of curiosity and persistence paid off, as he eventually managed to befriend the community of performers. “I couldn’t find a lot of background information about this back then, but through conversations with the performance owner and actors, I learned that this was something that originated from China. I started to take their photos from the side of the stage before capturing them up close,” he explains. When Schmid showed them the photos, there was a sense of reckoning from the elderly performers that these works will remain to remind the future of this art form, even after they are long gone. Even across the language barrier and abstractions of the street opera — as the performers often mimed rather than enacted elaborate stunts due to physical limitations — Schmid saw parallels between his Swiss heritage and a culture that was foreign to him, like how their traditional instruments both sounded.
In an attempt to differentiate between conventional documentary-style images and his own, he tapped his father-in-law, a calligraphy master with different Chinese characters on each portrait, to string together a series consisting of 144 words. “You have about 100 different possibilities to blend these words — each combination leads to a different meaning,” he shares. In more than one way, these photos stand as a testament to his curiosity and an act of preservation of an art that can never be duplicated in exact form. “These actors are just everyday people. The music isn’t composed, and there is no sheet music. It’s just passed down through generations. You can’t pass this down unless you’re a younger performer in the trope.”
Another defining cornerstone of his career is “Blackstage”, a series of electrifying portraits that capture the enigmatic presence of legendary rock stars like Mick Jagger and Freddie Mercury. What you will see is not your usual stage photography — captured mid-motion, sans dramatic stage lighting and props, these musical icons seem unaware of their photo being taken, entranced in their performance. In Schmid’s composition, which eliminates all but the artist in action, their charm is almost condensed and heightened — it is the person, not the grandiose production, that defines their artistry. “What I was interested in was not the music. Music back in the 70s, 80s and 90s was something else culturally. There was a whole generation of kids who stood up against their conservative parents through music. Music was their drug,” he explains. What led him to shoot rock stars on stage was not the celebrity culture, either. “While touring with AC/DC as their photographer, Angus Young sat beside me and asked, ‘You’re a nice guy, but why are you with us? I’ve never seen you take any photos of us — do we not pay you?’” Schmid shares. The monotony of the touring life did not interest him, as he recalls moving from hotel to hotel, soundchecks before, bars after — every day was the same. “The same night, Angus paused mid-performance and called me to come up on stage. ‘Where is bloody Hannes? Get him on stage!’, he said. As he stood over me with his guitar, he asked, ‘Is this interesting enough for you?’ and the perfect shot was taken.” Explaining that photographers on stage was an unprecedented phenomenon, he got to experiment with the lighting engineer for the optimal setup. As there were only five management companies that handled the rock and roll bands, acts like the Rolling Stones soon all wanted Hannes to shoot them on stage — it became his signature.
His anecdotes seemed light years away from the current pop culture landscape. In the current zeitgeist, mainstream media feels almost sterile, frivolous and mass-produced — does Hannes Schmid feel the same way, too? “I don’t know. I’m not in that world anymore. 80% of the bands came from very poor backgrounds — performing for thousands of people was their social uplift. When Roger Daltrey from The Who said hello, I witnessed 10,000 people in the stadium screaming back. But when the gig was over, back at their hotels alone, these artists could say hello, but nobody would respond. There was no training on how to be famous.” Schmid explained. The whole music scene was different back then, when dollars and cents carried a different value. “DRAM could fly 100 people out from Paris and London to have breakfast in New York; Elton John could have his hotel rooms refurnished as part of his rider.” In a time when one does not need to play instruments to release music, there is a real romanticisation of the past, but Hannes Schmid has come to terms with the fact that things are not what they used to be.
Literal elephants that appear in his photographs aside, there was another elephant in the room that needed to be addressed: when it comes to shooting subjects in impoverished states and rural settings, how does one prevent the imagery from coming across like poverty porn? “When I portrayed a lot of poor people and individuals living in misery, I always paid respect to their individuality. Each of them has a personality, so I choose to focus on them — creating eye contact, instead of drawing attention to the mud that surrounds them. With their eyes, I take away the negative parts that hold them back and paint the potential that lies ahead. Their humanity is now front and centre,” Schmid explains. “There are no dumb children, only those we don’t feed or educate. What I try to create is an homage to these individuals.” The proliferation has also changed how modern photographers create. Rather than being limited to 36 frames in a single film roll, it has become commonplace to consider photography as merely “collecting pictures” rather than a deliberate act of composing. Without monitors and advanced post-production tools — “Photoshop used to take 12 hours to change the colour of something” — Schmid equates photography to hunting, with limitations in the number of frames, a strong acumen was needed to account for lighting, shadows and the contrast they create. “Duct tape the screen and limit yourself to 30 shots. Pause before you shoot again,” he recommends, simulating the experience of shooting on film to promote a more deliberate creative process.
Part of his expansive repertoire includes a selection of the iconic Marlboro Man photographs he lensed in the early 90s (and later reinterpreted as hyperrealistic oil paintings) — raising the question: what gives his work an enduring resonance with the public? As the current media landscape is set in a scene where art is reduced to pixels on a mobile phone, seen for a total duration of five seconds before being swiped away into the void, how should photographers move? “You can’t fix the situation. Cameraphones have gotten so advanced that filters could make me look 18,” he laughs. While he started at a time when photographs were meant to be postcard-sized, technological advancements that have now allowed them to be blown up present a new opportunity for photographers. “When images are enlarged, you will gain a different perspective. Consider creating photographs for a museum, and then photography will become a totally different medium. Ask yourself how some can sit in front of a Van Gogh for hours — the same could be done for photography,” Schmid proposes.
As the pace the industry currently runs on has left many creatives feeling like mere commodities, how do we then navigate through the burnout? To Hannes Schmid, it is about striking a balance between the real and unreal. “With this little black box, you open up doors you would never have access to otherwise. A lot of what we deal with is beautiful, but not real — the models, the settings — yet all of them are tied to a very real need to make a living,” Schmid shares. Recognising that some famous photographers end up being typecast as producing only one specific look to meet demand, Schmid urges creatives to play outside their comfort zone to ground their own reality. “It should be the content of your photos that makes others recognise what you do, rather than having your work all look the same.” I challenged him back — how about clients would use past works to commission photographers, pressuring them to create something familiar? “Why don’t you go to this other guy, if you want this specific shot taken? I used to tell them. Giorgio Armani was very precise in the beginning, but eventually he would tell me, ‘It’s not what I wanted, but better than I expected.’” Schmid used to barricade his sets with caution tape, only allowing clients to talk to him until he started holding his camera. “I was lucky since there were no monitors back then. With these expensive sets, they had no choice but to trust me. Just like how laksa needs cockles to taste good, I need my ingredients too to do my work — young photographers need to stand up for themselves, but also be able to swallow their pride that they might lose a job in pursuit of their authenticity.”
As an artist whose works are deeply rooted in realism and highlighting humanity, I was also curious to know Hannes Schmid’s thoughts on A.I. “It’s one of our biggest discoveries in recent times. Incredible yet unavoidable, it’s up to us as artists to find our niche. There might not be 200,000 photographers shooting commercial work anymore — but 50 who will treat photography as fine art,” he circles back to his earlier point. With a biopic in the works, he witnessed how A.I. recreated a scene from his childhood using only old photos. Unlike the sentiment of fear that has permeated a group of young creative peers, he did not seem intimidated. “I’ve been through everything. Mobile phones used to look like suitcases in the past. Despite change, you have to believe in yourself and recognise your talent — even if it means swimming against the river tides,” he offers. He, too, talks about how to be an artist is to devote yourself to your cause. “It’s not about being different for the sake of being different, like dyeing your hair pink or whatever, it’s about being unafraid of falling. To fail means being able to learn from your mistakes. I always tell young people to listen to themselves — are you willing to go the other way? If you’re not willing, maybe you’re better off becoming an accountant.”
“The other way” in Schmid’s art now looks a lot like standing up for social causes. Having moved away from just selling his work in galleries, he now runs a nonprofit organisation in Cambodia called Smiling Gecko, located 60 kilometres northwest of Phnom Penh. Started in 2014, it is a 150-hectare campus in Kampong Chhnang that contains infrastructure to educate and upskill locals, as well as a luxury resort, which also provides employment opportunities. “The Museum of Modern Art called what I did social art, because I have no qualifications in architecture, agriculture and engineering. I’m just an artist, and I believe art can also be a way of living. What I do in Cambodia is to make the world more equal — when I spoke to government officials last week, I asked how we could live in a state of inequality, knowing that our children have everything while our neighbours’ have none.” For the everyday folk, Schmid aims to raise awareness by shifting local attitudes towards foreigners entering the country, providing financial support, or promoting tourism. “We actually depend on each other more than we think. Twenty years is how long it takes for education to make an impact on society, so I’m hoping that what we do today can change our lives 50 years down the line.”
In the hour-long conversation I shared with Schmid, it was clear to me that legends and the legacies they create are not measured based on commercial successes or whether others could remember your face. Hannes Schmid is unapologetically driven by a curiosity, sustained by the values he holds closest to him. Rejecting the spirit of hyperindividualism, his works convey a two-way relationship between him and his subjects, where neither is the main character. Still, both are equal actors in telling this story about humanity.
Hannes Schmid: A Life In Pictures is open to public at Appetite on Amoy Street, from now until 10 August 2025.
Once you are done with this story, click here to catch up with our June/July 2025 issue.