Trained as a photojournalist, Schmelling’s professional career has also included street photography, fashion and portraiture, as well as theatre lighting, graphics and book design. His work evolves organically, in a continuous cycle of discovery and development, with new ideas and skills picked up on one project taken forward into the next. Working collaboratively with creatives in other fields – including literature, design, music, painting, and theatre – is a vital part of Schmelling’s process. Drawing together unexpected elements, sidestepping clichéd forms of expression, every new project has a singular identity, fresh and constantly surprising.

Many of Schmelling’s projects explore the possibilities of the book as an art form – its look and feel as a physical object, the way that images and text can be combined to create narratives. Often, these narratives focus on the nuances of human behavior – on the visualization of interior states and the nature of the creative process itself, including his own. And though the documentary impulse is the foundation of Schmelling’s practice, he rarely sets out to make objective factual statements. His aim, instead, is to communicate his experience with honesty and immediacy – to capture the essence of the place and time in which he finds himself.

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