Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 15

Stefanie Schneider
White Trash Beautiful II from the 29 Palms, CA series

1999

About the Item

White Trash Beautiful I (29 Palms, CA), 1999 38x36cm, Edition of 30. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #794. Not mounted. THE GREATER THE EMPTINESS THE GRANDER THE ART – Stefan Gronert Not “Twenty-six Gasoline Stations” but “29 Palms, CA”! Forty-two years after Ed Ruscha’s legendary book, there is no gasoline station at the beginning of the book that is here at hand. Instead it is the open hearted Radha – with orange hair, pink-colored overalls and a bashful, or rather cunning, gaze that is directed downward – with which this book begins! And with her and with Max – attention: a woman –, one whose appearance is in accordance with the same styling, it comes to an end as well – after Radha has in the meantime colored her fingernails pink, again endowed with the same open heartedness and the same look which now, however, reveals in combination with her altered facial expression an “old-maidish” turning away from the viewer. This may serve as an example for a vivid and understandable transformation which flows into a large-scale representation of a cheerless settlement beneath a shining, blue sky – there a figure, lost straightaway, becomes overwhelmed. Pictures which in 1998/99 play in the harsh California sunlight or in spaces that are not exactly cozy and comfortable. “Play” is the correct word in this regard, for precisely in view of the pictures of persons, there remains more than just doubt as to whether we are looking at staged scenes or have simply happened upon the high-strung “reality” of a (wannabe) film world. Yet not all the pictures have the same character of a glaring, plastic world. Upon flipping through the pages, we also encounter unpretentious, literally “colorless” scenes in undefined interiors, or unspectacular views resembling a still life and opening out onto a nowhere land. That which connects all participants in these picture-worlds is the observation that they appear to be exhausted, lost, empty or uncertain about their existence. One is almost reminded of the empty gazes and loneliness of the protagonists in the pictures of large cities painted by Manet or Degas in the era of Early Modernism. With one exception, all the photographs which are reproduced here, which originally measure 60 by 70 cm but which here, in their present size and configuration, make productive use of the possibilities presented by the medium of the book, manifest several elements of B-movies: smoking, naked, made-up and muscular persons who are not inclined to conform entirely to the vision of Hollywood dreams. Beauty and vexation, eroticism and loneliness enter into a mixture which reveals the rift between desire and truth. From a distance, one is reminded of the “Untitled Film Stills” of Cindy Sherman, which in this regard are not nearly as drastic. Yet whereas her photos from the seventies are characterized by a cool, objective mode of representation in historicizing black and white, the photographs of Stefanie Schneider evince a soft, sometimes seemingly pictorial visual language with a coloration ranging from the pale to the artificial-glaring. As in many other pictures of Stefanie Schneider which often present themselves to us as sequences, these photos refer back as well to the perceptual stereotypes of film. Making use of instant photography, proceeding from which significantly enlarged C-prints come into being, her pictures summon up the impression of a narration without ultimately becoming part of a plot that is readable in a linear fashion. The illusion of the narrative element, however, simply enhances the experience of a renunciation of just this aspect. For the picture titles as well – and also the title of this publication – provide no real help with the imaginary construction of a story. Nevertheless, names return which include the first name of the artist herself: hence is everything not in fact a game but rather a series of authentic and instantaneous images, or is it after all nothing other than a staging, a game – how real is life? The paucity of plot elements, which contradicts all expectations of a cinematic style, as well as the emptiness and loneliness of the persons, enters into a peculiar, sometimes seemingly surreal association with the magic of the sun-drenched expanses of the dreamlike landscape. Just as the fantasy and imagination of the viewer are stimulated, so to the same great extent does the redemption of these visual figures of love founder on a void whose glaze is created, not least of all, by the peculiar blurriness of the photographic representation. The seemingly amateur character of these pictures, which have in no way been treated with any excessive scrupulousness, leaves us with a stimulating incertitude as to their interpretation, one in which the spheres of reality, fiction or dream are scarcely capable any longer of being differentiated. Thus the gaps and the scenic openness of what is presented ultimately set in motion a self-appraisal. So what remains after “29 Palms, CA”? Perhaps that hope which deviates from the saying of Ruscha that is quoted in the title: The stronger the photography the better the reality will be!
More From This SellerView All
  • Austen in front of Trailer (Till Death do us Part) - Polaroid, Analog, Color
    By Stefanie Schneider
    Located in Morongo Valley, CA
    'Austen in front of Trailer', (Till Death do Us part), 2005, 48 x 46 cm, Edition 2/5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist , based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature labe...
    Category

    Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

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

  • Austen in front of Trailer (Till Death do us Part) - Polaroid, Analog, Color
    By Stefanie Schneider
    Located in Morongo Valley, CA
    Austen in front of Trailer (Till Death do Us part) - 2005 128 x 125 cm, Edition 2/5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label...
    Category

    Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

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

  • Sam, Interior Hospital - featuring Ewan McGregor, Contemporary, Polaroid
    By Stefanie Schneider
    Located in Morongo Valley, CA
    Sam, Interior Hospital - featuring Ewan McGregor (Stay) - 2006, 38x36cm, Edition 1/10. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Archive Crystal Paper, based on the ori...
    Category

    Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

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

  • Super Cannes - Contemporary, Polaroid, Figurative, Portrait
    By Clare Marie Bailey
    Located in Morongo Valley, CA
    Super Cannes - 2019 Edition of 10 - 40 x 40 cm Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. 
Signed on back and certificate. 
Not mounted. Clare Marie Bailey Works and Lives: UK Cl...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Portrait Photography

    Materials

    Photographic Film, Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, P...

  • Athena and Henry (Stay) - starring Ryan Gosling and Elizabeth Reaser - Polaroid
    By Stefanie Schneider
    Located in Morongo Valley, CA
    Athena and Henry (Stay) - starring Ryan Gosling and Elizabeth Reaser - 2006 20x25cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and...
    Category

    Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

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

  • Sam (Stay) - starring Ewan McGregor
    By Stefanie Schneider
    Located in Morongo Valley, CA
    Stefanie Schneider's work was used for Marc Forster's movie 'Stay'. Featuring Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling. Naomi and Ryan were both portraying artists and Stefanie's art was the art both created during the movie. Stefanie's images were also used for Ryan Gosling's memory sequence, for the end titles, for edits in between and as art paintings hanging in several scenes within the movie. This Piece: Sam (Stay) - starring Ewan McGregor, 2006, 49x48cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, matte surface, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 5026. Not mounted. ----- Torsten Scheid, “Fotografie, Kunst, Kino. Revisited.”, FilmDienst 3/2006, page 11-13

 Photography Art Cinema. Revisited Stay expands a traditional connection through new facets Interwoven between the media of photography and film is a veritable mesh-work of technical, motific, metaphorical and personal interrelationships. Extending from photo-film which, as in La Jetée by Chris Marker (France, 1962) is a montage of single, unmoving photographs all the way to the portrayal of photographic motifs in Hollywood cinema―most recently in Memento (USA, 2000) and One hour photo (USA, 2002)―is the range of filmic-photographic interactions on the one hand, and from the adaption of modes of cinematic production to the imitation of film stills on the other. For instance, with the legendary Untitled Film Stills (1978) of the American artist Cindy Sherman, who later made her debut as a film director with Office Killer (USA, 1997) and thereby, like many others, changed sides: Wim Wenders, Robert Frank and Larry Clark are doubtlessly the most successful of these photographic-filmic border crossers. This brief survey provides only a vague indication of the dimensions of this intermedial field, which in fact extends much further and is constantly being cultivated. Also as a motif in film, photography has experienced a historical transformation: Photographers were once considered to be technicians who mastered a craft but never achieved the status of artists. Photographer-figures were caught in the allure of beautiful appearance, incapable of penetrating to the actual essence of things. Such depth was reserved for literature or painting. When photography in film touched upon the sphere of art, then most often as its contrasting model, as the metaphor for a superficial access to the world. Coming to mind are Fred Astaire as a singing fashion photographer in Stanley Donen’s musical film Funny Face (USA, 1957), or the restless lifestyle-photographer in Michelangelo Antonioni’s genre-classic Blow up (GB, 1966). For the doubting Thomas, only that exists which can be photographed. He ultimately enters the world of fantasy and thereby the field of art only unwillingly, when he becomes entangled in the world of his images. The last of his detail-enlargements shows only the photographic grain and has lost all connection to reality. The photograph looks as if it had been painted by Bill, the painter who is both friend and antagonist to the protagonist.

 Photography as Art It was first around the end of the last century that numerous filmmakers discovered photography as a genuine art form. In The Bridges of Madison County (USA, 1995) a sensitive Clint Eastwood stands, camera in hand, on the threshold of artistic status, and in Smoke (USA, 1994) a tobacco merchant ripens into a philosopher through his involvement in photography. Finally, in John Water’s parody of the art market, Pecker (USA, 1998), a provincial tom-fool is hyped into celebrated stardom amid the New York art scene because of his blurred snapshots. This film about a postmodern Kaspar Hauser in photographic art (with clear parallels to Richard Billingham, the British shooting...
    Category

    Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

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

You May Also Like
  • Portrait of Tranquility Base, Apollo 11 Vintage NASA Landscape Photo Kodak Paper
    By Nasa
    Located in New york, NY
    A landscape photograph of Buzz Aldrin standing next to a seismograph with the "Eagle" and American flag in the background remains an historical and artistic document from 8 days in s...
    Category

    1960s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    Photographic Paper, Photographic Film, C Print

  • RFK and Ethel Kennedy, Campaigning in Indiana USA 1960s, Documentary Photography
    By Burt Glinn
    Located in New york, NY
    RFK and Ethel Kennedy, campaigning in a small town in Indiana USA 1968 is a color photograph, 16” x 24,” an archival pigment print signed in pencil on verso (back of photo) by the Gl...
    Category

    1960s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    Photographic Film, Archival Paper, Archival Pigment, Rag Paper

  • Lace Curtains, Morocco, Contemporary Portrait Photography on Handmade Paper
    By Jean-Michel Voge
    Located in New york, NY
    Lace curtains, Morocco, 1980 by Jean-Michel (JM) Voge, is a contemporary color photograph, an archival pigment print on handmade Awagami Japanese paper. ...
    Category

    1980s Contemporary Portrait Photography

    Materials

    Photographic Film, Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Rag Paper, Digital, Arc...

  • Swing, Color Photography of Young Girl at the Gaudi Cathedral Barcelona, Spain
    By Burt Glinn
    Located in New york, NY
    Burt Glinn's The Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Swing, 1959, is a color photograph, 22” x 17”, an archival pigment print signed in pencil on verso (back of photograph) by the estate wit...
    Category

    1950s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    Archival Paper, Photographic Film, Archival Pigment

  • Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, Chuck Wein, Color Photography of Artists 1960s
    By Burt Glinn
    Located in New york, NY
    A 22” x 17” archival pigment color print of Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, and Chuck Wein, 1965. The Glinn estate signature is on verso (back of photograph) with Glinn's blind stamp in ...
    Category

    1950s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    Archival Paper, Photographic Film, Archival Pigment

  • Botero in his Studio, Paris, Photograph of Legendary Artist Fernando Botero
    By Jean-Michel Voge
    Located in New york, NY
    Fernando Botero in his Studio, Paris, 1992 by Jean-Michel Voge is a 13" x 19" archival pigment print in an edition of 5, printed by the photographer on handmade Japanese Awagami pape...
    Category

    1990s Contemporary Portrait Photography

    Materials

    Photographic Film, Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Rag Paper, Digital, Arc...

Recently Viewed

View All