In early March, Leica announced the recipients of its fifth annual Leica Women Foto Project Award, celebrating four exceptionally talented women photographers. PetaPixel is chatting with each honoree, starting with Canadian photographer Stasia Schmidt.
Stasia Schmidt’s Artistic Origins
Despite being one of the four Leica Women Foto Project Award winners, Schmidt is a relative newcomer to photography. However, she has a background in makeup artistry, so she certainly has a trained eye for aesthetics.
“I have not been to art school or photography school or anything like that. I was a makeup artist for a long time when I was younger. Then I spent a decade raising young children,” Schmidt explains to PetaPixel over Zoom. “And then in my very early forties, I decided I wanted to try my hand at photography.”
That was just a few years ago, in 2020. Schmidt was instantly bitten by the photography bug and dove in headfirst, learning as much as she could from others and developing her style.
The combination of Schmidt’s upbringing in remote, rugged northern Canada — she’s a self-described “bush kid” — and her makeup artistry is evident in her photography. Her work combines soft feminine imagery with strong outdoor themes, a playground wrongfully attributed to masculine adventures.
Schmidt grew up relatively isolated in a rural community and often turned to the outdoors for excitement and adventure. She also cites books as a valuable escape, especially science fiction and fantasy books. There are clear fantasy themes in her photography, particularly the Ephemerality series that helped Schmidt earn the Leica Women Foto Project Award.
Blending Harsh Environments With Feminine Energy
Schmidt explains that one of her goals for Ephemerality was to juxtapose rugged, adventurous environments with traditionally feminine visuals.
The subject of the series is Schmidt herself, draped in cloth that makes her anonymous.
“And this group of people that I go out with, they’re mostly men. There’s not a lot of women that are available to go out. You see a lot of images of men in these settings, but I really wanted to make it my own, but not like a vanity project of myself pictured in these settings. I want it to be anonymous so that any woman or anybody could see a feminine being there in those settings.”
While capturing photos in some of these environments is challenging enough, even without being behind and in front of the camera, Schmidt puts extensive effort into planning her compositions and scouting locations.
“I’m quite stubborn,” Schmidt says, explaining that she will go to great lengths to execute her ideas and concepts.
“That cliff was maybe 200 feet above the ocean. And it was this finger and there was these incredible radiating basalt rocks. And so I had seen that when I was hiking up the coastline, and I said to my friend, ‘I really want to shoot that with the ghost on the way back.’ So I had been ruminating on it the whole day, essentially, and they were like fingers jutting out into the ocean. So I set my camera up on one finger. I asked him to stay there to make sure my camera didn’t fall in the ocean off the cliff. And then I went back around and got down onto the cliff and did my whole thing. And out of that one session, I think I had about 200 images and I just picked the one that I think fits. If I see something that I say that’ll work, then I stick to it,” the photographer explains.
Conditions are constantly changing, of course, and she adapts, but Schmidt says she will do everything possible to bring her ideas to life and make the shot work. While sometimes it takes hundreds of shots to get everything just right, she remarks that it usually works out.
Finding the Hook: A Great Landscape Isn’t Always Enough
While each of Schmidt’s images could stand alone as a landscape image, the complete composition, including herself in the frame, takes things to another level and tells an entirely different feel and story. But beyond the result, the process itself is of paramount importance.
“I’m surrounded by beautiful landscapes everywhere, but it has to be something that is the hook that grabs my creative brain. Otherwise, there are many other photographers who take way better photos of landscapes than I do. So, there has to be something that just draws me in that makes me excited about an image in the landscape,” she explains.
Lines and form pull Schmidt in, but she also loves an element of danger. A scene can’t appear too safe or serene. And if Schmidt doesn’t feel something powerful about the entire process of an image, from concept to execution, she says she never feels all that great about the resulting image. While some of these photos that the photographer is less enamored with may end up on her Instagram, they will never end up in her portfolio.
Commitment to Personal Fulfillment and Ignoring External Noise
Although Schmidt is relatively new to photography, her unbreakable commitment to personal achievement is a common thread among many veteran photographers.
“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I’m just going to keep doing what I love doing, and if [others] enjoy it or feel inspired by it, that’s wonderful,” Schmidt says. “And if not, that’s fine too. I’m just here to create.”
“You don’t have to be an art major, you don’t have to have an incredible knowledge of gear, you can just get out there and create with whatever you have and whatever inspiration you have inside of you. It doesn’t matter what everyone tells you or what Instagram tells you. Just do whatever you want,” Schmidt explains, emphasizing the importance of people shooting what makes them happy and fulfilled.
What’s Next for Stasia Schmidt?
Schmidt’s award-winning Ephemerality project is done, and Schmidt has moved on to her next project, which she is playing pretty close to the vest. Without giving too much away, she says it will be a surrealist project.
As part of her Leica Women Foto Award, Leica has kitted Schmidt with its new Leica SL3 camera and some glass. Although Schmidt is not a gearhead, she’s looking forward to using the Leica equipment for her latest project.
She hopes her new project will be featured in an exhibition in Calgary, Alberta, next February. Schmidt has been named Exposure Photography’s 2024 Emerging Artist of the Year, and the exhibit will be her first solo show.
To stay up to date with Stasia Schmidt, 2024 Leica Women Foto Project Award winner, visit her website and follow her on Instagram.
Image credits: All images © Stasia Schmidt
