Marian Schmidt (b. 1945) is a Polish photographer and a founder of humanistic photography renewal in Poland. Considered by many - next Henri Cartier-Bresson as a master of image composition. He believes that the photographer's mood is crucial and to take better pictures, you need to work on your personality, be focused, attentive, and in a stress-free state.He recommends meditation.
Born in Zyrardow, his parents immigrated to Caracas in Venezuela when he was 1 year old. He graduated from mathematics (PhD) in the United States at Brandeis University, where he was friends with John Nash (famous from the movie "A Beautiful Mind"), studied the phenomenology of music with the conductor Sergiu Celibidache. He is fascinated by the spiritual life. As he says, the biggest influence on his life exerted Jiddu Krishnamurti and Hermann Hesse.
He has over fifty prestigious photographic exhibitions in New York, Paris, London, Tokyo, Zurich, Warsaw, Krakow, Gdansk, Poznan, Szczecin, and in his home town of Zyrardow.
He lived in the U.S., France and now lives in Poland. He is a lecturer and the director of the Warsaw School of Photography and a member of Raphoe photographic agency in Paris. He also taught at the Department of Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan and Lodz Film School, where in 2002 he obtained his habilitation dissertation in the discipline of artistic photography.