Jason Schmidt

It’s out! You can head over to The New Yorker to watch our documentary short THE CANDY FACTORY (link in bio). Our protagonist Ann Ballentine showed us what’s possible when one isn’t motivated by money, but instead by a little bit of magic. This film was an excuse to connect with our subjects, but Ann taught us you don’t need an excuse. You just need to trust your instincts, make stuff, and surround yourself with people you love. A giant thank you to EP @paulmoakley @newyorkermag for giving us critical notes and for releasing this film to such a large and generous audience. It’s been amazing to watch everyone fall in love with Ann and her tenants, just like we did. And thanks also to @kate_emerson @newyorkermag for this terrific trailer. Infinite praying hand emoji to our subjects (stand by for more details on all of them), the festival programmers, and our trusted collaborators: Editor @grahambomason Cinematographer @drewenglishh Composer @adamlouisschatz Additional music @abbsman + @tothtunes Sound recording @matteolibb Re-recording mix Charlie Keating Titles (and so much more) @keiraalexandra Color @shawnkingcolor @honestlaborcolor 💜

I've been taking pictures of artists at the Venice Biennale since 2001, which is now somehow 25 years ago! Leaving tonight for the 2026 edition, but first, some favorites through the years...

Yana Peel, President of Arts, Culture & Heritage @chanelofficial in honor of her inclusion in@cultured_mag CULT100! @yanapeel walks the walk, supporting artists like nobody’s business. We also only just realized that I photographed her, oh, just 18 years ago with some other art world movers and shakers: artist @lindersterling , curators @stuartcomer and @e_m_neilson and gallerist @stuartshavemodernart in London for @britishvogue . Time is liquid these days! (Thanks for the BTS @emma_lcq !)

Huge congrats to Carol Bove on her first museum survey filling up the rotunda at the @guggenheim with her monumental work! Here is my latest studio visit with her in honor of the exhibition and her inclusion in @cultured_mag CULT100. Scroll further to see my other Carol portraits through the years. Yes, I’m a completist.

Women wore pants! Dalí made paintings! Dream job to shoot at La Pausa after @petermarinoarchitect restored the villa to its 1935 glory. Thank you @chanelofficial !!! 🤍🤍🤍 @cottage8films President of Arts, Culture & Heritage @yanapeel Head of Content Strategy and Production @emma_lcq Head of Heritage Sites Hélène Fulgence Responsable Production Arts, Culture & Communications Julie Pinon Responsable Production Arts, Culture & Communications @roselstevenson Directrice @roscoproduction Paris @margaux_dsp Line Producer, Rosco Paris @lidwinechudy 1st AD @pim.caloni Director of Photography @chrisclarkedop 1st AC @samuel35mm Set Designer @manon_everhard Post Production @nightshiftparis Post Producer @pauline_sang Editor Roxane Fauré-Huet @roxanehhh Music, sound design + mix @edgardelambre @8__represent Color @lauregoyer.colorist + Archival shots: - Gabrielle Chanel in her olive tree in the cloister at La Pausa, 1938 with François Hugo, Pierre Colle, Audrey James Field, Maria Ruspoli-Hugo. Photo Roger Schall © Schall Collection - Salvador Dalí at La Pausa in the 1930s. Photograph: Photo Wolfgang Vennemann © Fundació Gala–Salvador Dalí © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala–Salvador Dalí/ADAGP, Paris 2025

"I wanted to paint a painting inside the painting with me painting it.” —Lisa Yuskavage Love when multiple studio visits turn into a Russian doll situation! Grateful to @phaidonpress for sending me back to shoot Lisa and her studio for her excellent new monograph. Congrats @lisayuskavage !

ARTEFIERA BOLOGNA 2026 BOOTH A27 | HALL 25 NOW ON VIEW Open to the public: 6-8 February 2026 Focus: Jason Schmidt At Artefiera, in the “Fotografia e Dintori” section, curated by Marta Papini (@marta_papini ), the gallery was invited to present a selection of photographs from Jason Schmidt’s 'Artists' series, an ambitious project started in 1995 to map the most significant international contemporary artists of today’s art scene. The corpus, now comprising over 800 images, portrays artists in their studios, alongside works in progress or in environments familiar to them, offering a close and intimate insight into the creative processes that precede the finished work. For her portrait, taken in her New York studio on 16 September 2011, Cindy Sherman is pictured in front of a series of shelves displaying numerous masks and heads—objects the artist began collecting in the 1980s, when she started using prosthetics and other artificial body parts in her work. As the artist said, "I don't like having other people take my photo because I never know what to do with myself, and they never know what to do with me. I'm aware that other photographers are slightly intimidated by shooting me, and I can see the challenge. I don't know how to do it any better, unless I'm posing in "character.” Images: Cindy Sherman; Thomas Demand; Laurie Simmons William Eggleston; Adam Fuss; Roni Horn; Andreas Gursky; Roe Ethridge; Victoria Sambunaris @jasonschmidtstudio #cindysherman #apalazzogallery

Jonas Mekas December 6, 2003 "Most of what I do in my life is diaristic, which means improvised on the spot. Like this picture. It made no sense to take a picture indoors when there was this beautiful snowstorm going on outside. I’m in a parking lot next door to my studio, one of the graffiti artists’ favored spots. My work for the upcoming Whitney Biennial? Even at the moment this picture is being taken, or rather, that I am typing this note, I do not yet know what I’ll show at the Whitney. I will improvise and decide at the last minute. That’s how I live and that’s how I work. No advance plans. That makes life (if not art) more interesting, as Buddha once said."

“I’m constantly rearranging everything. I treat the whole space like a collage…to me, it’s all connected,” @ElliottHundley ⁠ insists. “Art, life, past, present, memory, mythology. I’m interested in everything around me, including the chairs and dishes.” Thank you @mayer.rus @michaelsshome @amyastley @archdigest for asking me to visit Elliott, who is just the best. I felt like a kid in a candy shop. I’m posting today because Elliot has a show opening tomorrow night at a very special gallery @TierradelSolGallery in Los Angeles (shout out to @jjennyraskk ). It’s not actually his work (he just had a mid-career solo exhibition @sbmuseart ), but a show he curated: ⁠"Elliott Hundley curates Model World, opening Saturday, January 17, 6-9pm at Tierra de Sol Gallery. As part of a foundation supporting adults with disabilities through, among other things, their signature visual arts programs, the gallery has a well-earned reputation for placing the idiom formerly known as Outsider firmly within the contemporary art discourse—consistently centering affecting, skillful, unique perspectives on material and subject matter. And while they’ve invited guest curators before, this foray with Elliott Hundley—an artist and maker who is one of the most zestful, ardent proponents of meaningful maximalism I’ve ever met—marks the first time artists are included who are not part of the TDS cohort (Tanya Brodsky, Claire Chambless, Pippa Garner, Karl Haendel, Lauren Halsey, Shana Lutker, Kristen Morgin, Ed Ruscha, to name a few.) The pageant of expressively rendered, passionately worked trucks, houses, castles, streets, monuments, cosmological and/or personal landscapes, and beguiling talismans of inscrutable meaning does not chart differences or hierarchies—if anything, it’s the opposite. What holds the show together is a shared insistence on model-making as a way of thinking, where whimsy is not (or not only) a tone to be decoded, but a fully functional methodology". —@shananys

We are so happy to share that The Candy Factory has received a Special Mention for Best Documentary Short from the International Documentary Association. We are grateful to the @idaorg and pinching ourselves to be honored alongside such incredible filmmakers. We are super fans of everything the IDA does and couldn’t be more excited to join the festivities this weekend in LA for their 41st (!) Documentary Awards. 🍾 Painting by Candy Factory tenant @eileen_murphy_studio

Part 1 of 2: Milton Avery’s studio from today’s @tmagazine piece “What Happens to Artists’ Studios After They Die?” by M.H. Miller. Although he died 60 years ago, Avery’s studio is still intact—and largely unchanged—because his wife, the artist, Sally Michel Avery used it until she died in 2003 at 100, and now it’s used by their daughter, the painter March Avery who is 92! Thank you @tmagazine @nadiavellam Esin Goknar and @karmakarma9

Part 2 of 2: From today’s @tmagazine piece “What Happens to Artists’ Studios After They Die?” by M.H. Miller. Tom Wesselmann’s studio is located off the lobby of what was the Village Voice building. Cliché as it may be, there's always something behind every door in this city! Thank you @tmagazine @nadiavellam and Esin Goknar.