Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 5

Stefanie Schneider
Untitled (Olancha) - Stranger than Paradise - analog C-Print based on a Polaroid

2006

About the Item

Untitled (Olancha) - 2006 38x37cm. Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 738. Not mounted. A German view of the American West The works of Stefanie Schneider evoke Ed Ruscha's obsession with the American experience, the richness of Georgia O'Keefe's deserts and the loneliness of Edward Hopper's haunting paintings. So how exactly did this German photographer become one of the most important artists of the American narrative of the 20th and 21st century? Born in Germany in 1968, photographer Schneider divides her time between Berlin and Los Angeles. Her process begins in the American West, in locations such as the planes and deserts of Southern California, where she photographs her subjects. In Berlin, Schneider develops and enlarges her works by hand. What is initially striking about Schneider's images is perhaps simply the color of her expired Polaroids but her role in preserving the use of Polaroid film is one aspect of her work that has gained great respect from her contemporaries and the critics, as her work came about during a time when the Polaroid, a symbol of American photography, was on the road to extinction. This theme of preservation and deterioration is a core part of Schneider's oeuvre. In an interview in October 2014 with Artnet, the artist explained how her own experiences of pain and loss inspire her. ''My work resembles my life: Love, lost and unrequited, leaves its mark in our lives as a senseless pain that has no place in the present.'' ''The ex-lover experiences the residues of love as an amputee experiences the sensation of a ghost limb.'' - Stefanie Schneider Schneider's subjects are often featured in apocalyptic settings: desert planes, trailer parks, oilfields, run-down motels and empty beaches, alone, or if not, not connected with one another. ''It is the tangible experience of ''absence'' that has inspired my work,'' explained Schneider. Barnebys, May 3rd, 2017 Stefanie Schneider was born and raised in Cuxhaven, Germany but lives and works in Southern California. Exploring the American dream and capturing it with Polaroid instant film. Situated on the verge of an elusive super-reality, her photographic sequences provide the ambience for loosely woven story lines and a cast of phantasmic characters that reflect a part of the narrators life told from her perspective. Often about love, communication. sexuality and relationships. Schneider works with the chemical mutations of expired polaroid film stock. Chemical explosions of color spreading across the surfaces undermine the photograph's commitment to reality and induce her characters into trance-like dreamscapes. Like flickering sequences of old road movies Schneider's images seem to evaporate before conclusions can be made - their ephemeral reality manifesting in subtle gestures and mysterious motives. Schneider's images refuse to succumb to reality, they keep alive the confusions of dream, desire, fact, and fiction yet they also explore the relationship with the medium and the viewer. The wabi-sabi 'ness' of Schneider's work can not be denied or ignored. It's a step of acceptance of 'flaws', gaps and distortions. Missing pieces of the puzzle. The artist flaunts, uses and exposes the unknown using expired Polaroid instant film intentionally. Presents it. What you do with that is up to you. That missing part of the picture is for you to include yourself, you fill it in with yourself. That might be critical that it's there at all, missing and missing the entire point all together or by filling in the unknown with their own imagination. Even their own memories which then integrates the viewer and artist as one with limitless potential. Stefanie Schneider's new photographic works tell fantastic stories about her adopted Californian home. She seeks out faded American myths and distils auratically charged reality in a very personal and surprising way. She uses out-of-date Polaroid film, and the blemishes caused by the degenerated film stock, - are included in the composition in a painterly way. Exposure mistakes and low budget movie effects are combined to alienating effect. Everything shimmers and flickers before our eyes. The artist plays with the authentic poetry of the amateur, mixing strangely dreamy staging with random photochemical events. In the 16-part work Frozen, which is characterized by a strangely transcendent mood in the lighting, film-still-like pictorial clusters come together to form a mysterious story, with the artist herself as the lonely protagonist. the aesthetic is reminiscent of early Lynch films. The components of the elliptically choreographed events are scenes from an enchanted, gleaming winter landscape, together with "staged snapshots" of a pale young woman in her underskirts, who radiates the troubled reality of a mirage with her sleep walking presence. The story is presented in the manner of cinematic flashbacks or dream sequences. Stage blood and a knife are used to evoke a crime of passion whose surreal attractiveness is derived from the scenic openess of what is shown. The deliberate use of old instant picture stock establishes in a richly faceted way the ephemeral quality of vulnerability and transience within a reality that is brittle from the outset. The American Stars and Stripes, recently updated as the absolute epitome of a patriotic signifier, is the subject of the 9-part work Primary Colors (2001). Schneider's reassuringly European view, free of undue emotion, presents the Stars and Stripes motif in a strangley alienated form: she shows stills with phases of fluttering violently in the wind, even torn in some cases, and the poor film stock emphazises the fragility of the icon even more. FlashART - Sabine Dorothee Lehner (translated from German by Michael Robinson)
More From This SellerView All
  • Blue Bridge - Analog, Mounted, Vintage, Contemporary, Landscape, Polaroid, Color
    By Stefanie Schneider
    Located in Morongo Valley, CA
    Blue Bridge (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 58x57cm, Edition 6/10. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the original Polaroid. Mounte...
    Category

    Early 2000s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Photographic Paper, Archival Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

    Blue Bridge - Analog, Mounted, Vintage, Contemporary, Landscape, Polaroid, Color

    Stefanie Schneider
    Blue Bridge - Analog, Mounted, Vintage, Contemporary, Landscape, Polaroid, Color, 1999

  • Untitled (The Last Picture Show)
    By Stefanie Schneider
    Located in Morongo Valley, CA
    'Untitled' (The Last Picture Show) - 2005, Edition 2/10, 20x20cm, Based on a Polaroid, Certificate and signature label, Not mounted, Artist inve...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Figurative Photography

    Materials

    Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

    Untitled (The Last Picture Show)

    Stefanie Schneider
    Untitled (The Last Picture Show), 2005

  • Memories of Love III (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - Polaroid, Color
    By Stefanie Schneider
    Located in Morongo Valley, CA
    Memories of Love III (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and signatur...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

    Memories of Love III (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - Polaroid, Color

    Stefanie Schneider
    Memories of Love III (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - Polaroid, Color, 2013

  • Wonder Valley (Sidewinder) - Polaroid, 21st Century, Contemporary
    By Stefanie Schneider
    Located in Morongo Valley, CA
    Wonder Valley (Sidewinder) - 2005 Edition of 5, 156x125cm. Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 3094. Not mounted. "pr...
    Category

    Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Paintings

    Materials

    Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

    Wonder Valley (Sidewinder) - Polaroid, 21st Century, Contemporary

    Stefanie Schneider
    Wonder Valley (Sidewinder) - Polaroid, 21st Century, Contemporary, 2005

  • Wonder Valley (Sidewinder) - Polaroid, 21st Century, Contemporary
    By Stefanie Schneider
    Located in Morongo Valley, CA
    Wonder Valley (Sidewinder) - 2005 Edition of 5, 156x125cm. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 3094. Not mounted. "...
    Category

    Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Paintings

    Materials

    C Print, Color, Polaroid, Archival Paper, Photographic Paper

    Wonder Valley (Sidewinder) - Polaroid, 21st Century, Contemporary

    Stefanie Schneider
    Wonder Valley (Sidewinder) - Polaroid, 21st Century, Contemporary, 2005

  • Untitled (Traintracks) - based on a Polaroid
    By Stefanie Schneider
    Located in Morongo Valley, CA
    Untitled (Train tracks) - The Last Picture Show - 2004 38x37cm. Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Art...
    Category

    Early 2000s Contemporary Abstract Paintings

    Materials

    Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

    Untitled (Traintracks) - based on a Polaroid

    Stefanie Schneider
    Untitled (Traintracks) - based on a Polaroid, 2004

You May Also Like
  • Bundle of Joy
    By Newbold Bohemia
    Located in Hudson, NY
    digital c-print, edition of 10 prices quoted are for unframed prints Newbold Bohemia (born 1965, Evansville, Indiana) archival digital C-Print, 20 x 30 inches unframed Photog...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    C Print

    Bundle of Joy

    Newbold Bohemia
    Bundle of Joy, 2012-13

  • Lous and Y Diptych, From the series Lous and The Yakuza.
    By Hunter & Gatti
    Located in Miami Beach, FL
    Lous and Kakoma Diptych, 2022 by Hunter & Gatti From the series Lous and The Yakuza Acrylic and oil wax on fine art paper 255 grs. Overall size: 20.6 in H x 31.4 in W Individual size...
    Category

    2010s Abstract Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Wax, Oil, Acrylic, Archival Paper

    Lous and Y Diptych, From the series Lous and The Yakuza.

    Hunter & Gatti
    Lous and Y Diptych, From the series Lous and The Yakuza. , 2022

  • LV and LVII Diptych, From the series Lous and The Yakuza. Mixed media photograph
    By Hunter & Gatti
    Located in Miami Beach, FL
    LV and LVII Diptych, 2022 by Hunter & Gatti From the series Lous and The Yakuza Acrylic and oil wax on fine art paper 255 grs. Overall size: 20.6 in H x 31.4 in W Individual size: 20...
    Category

    2010s Abstract Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Wax, Oil, Acrylic, Archival Paper

    LV and LVII Diptych, From the series Lous and The Yakuza. Mixed media photograph

    Hunter & Gatti
    LV and LVII Diptych, From the series Lous and The Yakuza. Mixed media photograph, 2022

  • E and V Diptych, From the series Opposed Tendencies. Mixed media photography
    By Hunter & Gatti
    Located in Miami Beach, FL
    E and V Diptych, 2022 by Hunter & Gatti From the series Opposed Tendencies Acrylic and oil wax on fine art paper 255 grs. Overall size: 29.5 in H x 47.2 in W Image size: 29.5 in H x ...
    Category

    2010s Abstract Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Wax, Oil, Acrylic, Archival Paper

    E and V Diptych, From the series Opposed Tendencies. Mixed media photography

    Hunter & Gatti
    E and V Diptych, From the series Opposed Tendencies. Mixed media photography, 2022

  • L, K and B Triptych, From the series Opposed Tendencies. Mixed media portrait
    By Hunter & Gatti
    Located in Miami Beach, FL
    L, K and B Triptych, 2022 by Hunter & Gatti From the series Opposed Tendencies Acrylic and oil wax on fine art paper 255 grs. Overall size: 29.5 in H x 70.8 in W Individual size: 29.5 in H x 23.6 in W Unframed Set of 3 photographs...
    Category

    2010s Abstract Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Wax, Oil, Acrylic, Archival Paper

    L, K and B Triptych, From the series Opposed Tendencies. Mixed media portrait

    Hunter & Gatti
    L, K and B Triptych, From the series Opposed Tendencies. Mixed media portrait , 2022

  • Lous and Kakoma Diptych, From the series Lous and The Yakuza.
    By Hunter & Gatti
    Located in Miami Beach, FL
    Lous and Kakoma Diptych, 2022 by Hunter & Gatti From the series Lous and The Yakuza Acrylic and oil wax on fine art paper 255 grs. Overall size: 20.6 in H x 31.4 in W Individual size...
    Category

    2010s Abstract Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Wax, Oil, Acrylic, Archival Paper

    Lous and Kakoma Diptych, From the series Lous and The Yakuza.

    Hunter & Gatti
    Lous and Kakoma Diptych, From the series Lous and The Yakuza. , 2022

Recently Viewed

View All

More Ways To Browse

Trailer Painting
Painting Stranger
Mark Stock Prints
Figurative Contemporary Painters
Painting Of Rome
Large Figures
Oil Painting Of Man
The Secret
Beautiful Woman
Dutch Paintings
Old World Paintings
Gallery 1950
Oil Painting Of A Man
Painting Of Child
Dutch Paint
Beautiful Women
New York City Scene
International Scene
View All Popular Color Photography Searches