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Art For Sale
Artist: Stefanie Schneider
Artist: Ludvig Jacobsen
Cups III (Suburbia) Contemporary, Polaroid, Analog, Color, Photography
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Cups III (Suburbia) - 2004 50x60cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid, Signed on verso with Certificate, Artist inventory number: 2913. Not mounted. This pro...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Into the dark (Deconstructivism) - Contemporary, Expired Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Into the dark (Deconstructivism) - 2020 - about the narrative potential of images. 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid, Artist Inventory 4600. Signat...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Waiting for Response (Strange Love)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Waiting for Response (Strange Love) - 2005 50 x 40 cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on an i-sight video chat. Signature label and certificate. Not mounted. A piece of S...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Video, Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color

Breathing I (Deconstructivism) - Contemporary, Expired Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Breathing I (Deconstructing) - 2015 - about the narrative potential of images. 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid, Artist Inventory 15835. Signature...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Winter (The Last Picture Show)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Winter (The Last Picture Show) - 2005, 50x49cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist I...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Untitled (Paradise) - Contemporary, Nude, Men, Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Untitled (Paradise) - 1999, 20x20cm. Edition 2/10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 20451. Not...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Reflection (Suburbia) - Contemporary, Polaroid, Photography
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Reflection (Suburbia) - 2004 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid, Not mounted, Certificate and signature label. Artist Inventory No. 2765. This project...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Untitled (Paradise) - Contemporary, Nude, Men, Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Untitled (Paradise) - 1999, 20x20cm. Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 362. Not ...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Daisy on Bed (Till Death do us Part) - Polaroid, Nude, Contemporary
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Daisy on Bed (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 - 125x154cm, Edition 3/3, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on an original Polaroid. Artist ...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Autumn
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Autumn - 2001, 20x29cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid Slide. Signature label and Certificate. Not mounted. LIFE’S A DREAM (The Personal World of Stefanie Schneider) by Mark Gisbourne Projection is a form of apparition that is characteristic of our human nature, for what we imagine almost invariably transcends the reality of what we live. And, an apparition, as the word suggests, is quite literally ‘an appearing’, for what we appear to imagine is largely shaped by the imagination of its appearance. If this sounds tautological then so be it. But the work of Stefanie Schneider is almost invariably about chance and apparition. And, it is through the means of photography, the most apparitional of image-based media, that her pictorial narratives or photo-novels are generated. Indeed, traditional photography (as distinct from new digital technology) is literally an ‘awaiting’ for an appearance to take place, in line with the imagined image as executed in the camera and later developed in the dark room. The fact that Schneider uses out-of-date Polaroid film stock to take her pictures only intensifies the sense of their apparitional contents when they are realised. The stability comes only at such time when the images are re-shot and developed in the studio, and thereby fixed or arrested temporarily in space and time. The unpredictable and at times unstable film she adopts for her works also creates a sense of chance within the outcome that can be imagined or potentially envisaged by the artist Schneider. But this chance manifestation is a loosely controlled, or, better called existential sense of chance, which becomes pre-disposed by the immediate circumstances of her life and the project she is undertaking at the time. Hence the choices she makes are largely open-ended choices, driven by a personal nature and disposition allowing for a second appearing of things whose eventual outcome remains undefined. And, it is the alliance of the chance-directed material apparition of Polaroid film, in turn explicitly allied to the experiences of her personal life circumstances, that provokes the potential to create Stefanie Schneider’s open-ended narratives. Therefore they are stories based on a degenerate set of conditions that are both material and human, with an inherent pessimism and a feeling for the sense of sublime ridicule being seemingly exposed. This in turn echoes and doubles the meaning of the verb ‘to expose’. To expose being embedded in the technical photographic process, just as much as it is in the narrative contents of Schneider’s photo-novel exposés. The former being the unstable point of departure, and the latter being the uncertain ends or meanings that are generated through the photographs doubled exposure. The large number of speculative theories of apparition, literally read as that which appears, and/or creative visions in filmmaking and photography are self-evident, and need not detain us here. But from the earliest inception of photography artists have been concerned with manipulated and/or chance effects, be they directed towards deceiving the viewer, or the alchemical investigations pursued by someone like Sigmar Polke. None of these are the real concern of the artist-photographer Stefanie Schneider, however, but rather she is more interested with what the chance-directed appearances in her photographs portend. For Schneider’s works are concerned with the opaque and porous contents of human relations and events, the material means are largely the mechanism to achieving and exposing the ‘ridiculous sublime’ that has come increasingly to dominate the contemporary affect(s) of our world. The uncertain conditions of today’s struggles as people attempt to relate to each other - and to themselves - are made manifest throughout her work. And, that she does this against the backdrop of the so-called ‘American Dream’, of a purportedly advanced culture that is Modern America, makes them all the more incisive and critical as acts of photographic exposure. From her earliest works of the late nineties one might be inclined to see her photographs as if they were a concerted attempt at an investigative or analytic serialisation, or, better still, a psychoanalytic dissection of the different and particular genres of American subculture. But this is to miss the point for the series though they have dates and subsequent publications remain in a certain sense unfinished. Schneider’s work has little or nothing to do with reportage as such, but with recording human culture in a state of fragmentation and slippage. And, if a photographer like Diane Arbus dealt specifically with the anomalous and peculiar that made up American suburban life, the work of Schneider touches upon the alienation of the commonplace. That is to say how the banal stereotypes of Western Americana have been emptied out, and claims as to any inherent meaning they formerly possessed has become strangely displaced. Her photographs constantly fathom the familiar, often closely connected to traditional American film genre, and make it completely unfamiliar. Of course Freud would have called this simply the unheimlich or uncanny. But here again Schneider almost never plays the role of the psychologist, or, for that matter, seeks to impart any specific meanings to the photographic contents of her images. The works possess an edited behavioural narrative (she has made choices), but there is never a sense of there being a clearly defined story. Indeed, the uncertainty of my reading here presented, acts as a caveat to the very condition that Schneider’s photographs provoke. Invariably the settings of her pictorial narratives are the South West of the United States, most often the desert and its periphery in Southern California. The desert is a not easily identifiable space, with the suburban boundaries where habitation meets the desert even more so. There are certain sub-themes common to Schneider’s work, not least that of journeying, on the road, a feeling of wandering and itinerancy, or simply aimlessness. Alongside this subsidiary structural characters continually appear, the gas station, the automobile, the motel, the highway, the revolver, logos and signage, the wasteland, the isolated train track and the trailer. If these form a loosely defined structure into which human characters and events are cast, then Schneider always remains the fulcrum and mechanism of their exposure. Sometimes using actresses, friends, her sister, colleagues or lovers, Schneider stands by to watch the chance events as they unfold. And, this is even the case when she is a participant in front of camera of her photo-novels. It is the ability to wait and throw things open to chance and to unpredictable circumstances, that marks the development of her work over the last eight years. It is the means by which random occurrences take on such a telling sense of pregnancy in her work. However, in terms of analogy the closest proximity to Schneider’s photographic work is that of film. For many of her titles derive directly from film, in photographic series like OK Corral (1999), Vegas (1999), Westworld (1999), Memorial Day (2001), Primary Colours (2001), Suburbia (2004), The Last Picture Show (2005), and in other examples. Her works also include particular images that are titled Zabriskie Point, a photograph of her sister in an orange wig. Indeed the tentative title for the present publication Stranger Than Paradise is taken from Jim Jarmusch’s film of the same title in 1984. Yet it would be dangerous to take this comparison too far, since her series 29 Palms (1999) presages the later title of a film that appeared only in 2002. What I am trying to say here is that film forms the nexus of American culture, and it is not so much that Schneider’s photographs make specific references to these films (though in some instances they do), but that in referencing them she accesses the same American culture that is being emptied out and scrutinised by her photo-novels. In short her pictorial narratives might be said to strip films of the stereotypical Hollywood tropes that many of them possess. Indeed, the films that have most inspired her are those that similarly deconstruct the same sentimental and increasingly tawdry ‘American Dream’ peddled by Hollywood. These include films like David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), Wild at Heart (1990) The Lost Highway (1997), John Dahl’s The Last Seduction (1994) or films like Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise with all its girl-power Bonny and Clyde-type clichés. But they serve no more than as a backdrop, a type of generic tableau from which Schneider might take human and abstracted elements, for as commercial films they are not the product of mere chance and random occurrence. Notwithstanding this observation, it is also clear that the gender deconstructions that the characters in these films so often portray, namely the active role of women possessed of a free and autonomous sexuality (even victim turned vamp), frequently find resonances within the behavioural events taking place in Schneider’s photographs and DVD sequences; the same sense of sexual autonomy that Stefanie Schneider possesses and is personally committed to. In the series 29 Palms (first begun in 1999) the two women characters Radha and Max act out a scenario that is both infantile and adolescent. Wearing brightly coloured fake wigs of yellow and orange, a parody of the blonde and the redhead, they are seemingly trailer park white trash possessing a sentimental and kitsch taste in clothes totally inappropriate to the locality. The fact that Schneider makes no judgment about this is an interesting adjunct. Indeed, the photographic projection of the images is such that the girls incline themselves to believe that they are both beautiful and desirous. However, unlike the predatory role of women in say Richard Prince’s photographs, which are simply a projection of a male fantasy onto women, Radha and Max are self-contained in their vacuous if empty trailer and motel world of the swimming pool, nail polish, and childish water pistols. Within the photographic sequence Schneider includes herself, and acts as a punctum of disruption. Why is she standing in front of an Officers’ Wives Club? Why is Schneider not similarly attired? Is there a proximity to an army camp, are these would-be Lolita(s) Rahda and Max wives or American marine groupies, and where is the centre and focus of their identity? It is the ambiguity of personal involvement that is set up by Schneider which deliberately makes problematic any clear sense of narrative construction. The strangely virulent colours of the bleached-out girls stand in marked contrast to Schneider’s own anodyne sense of self-image. Is she identifying with the contents or directing the scenario? With this series, perhaps, more than any other, Schneider creates a feeling of a world that has some degree of symbolic order. For example the girls stand or squat by a dirt road, posing the question as to their sexual and personal status. Following the 29 Palms series, Schneider will trust herself increasingly by diminishing the sense of a staged environment. The events to come will tell you both everything and nothing, reveal and obfuscate, point towards and simultaneously away from any clearly definable meaning. If for example we compare 29 Palms to say Hitchhiker (2005), and where the sexual contents are made overtly explicit, we do not find the same sense of simulated identity. It is the itinerant coming together of two characters Daisy and Austen, who meet on the road and subsequently share a trailer together. Presented in a sequential DVD and still format, we become party to a would-be relationship of sorts. No information is given as to the background or social origins, or even any reasons as to why these two women should be attracted to each other. Is it acted out? Are they real life experiences? They are women who are sexually free in expressing themselves. But while the initial engagement with the subject is orchestrated by Schneider, and the edited outcome determined by the artist, beyond that we have little information with which to construct a story. The events are commonplace, edgy and uncertain, but the viewer is left to decide as to what they might mean as a narrative. The disaggregated emotions of the work are made evident, the game or role playing, the transitory fantasies palpable, and yet at the same time everything is insubstantial and might fall apart at any moment. The characters relate but they do not present a relationship in any meaningful sense. Or, if they do, it is one driven the coincidental juxtaposition of random emotions. Should there be an intended syntax it is one that has been stripped of the power to grammatically structure what is being experienced. And, this seems to be the central point of the work, the emptying out not only of a particular American way of life, but the suggestion that the grounds upon which it was once predicated are no longer possible. The photo-novel Hitchhiker is porous and the culture of the seventies which it might be said to homage is no longer sustainable. Not without coincidence, perhaps, the decade that was the last ubiquitous age of Polaroid film. In the numerous photographic series, some twenty or so, that occur between 29 Palms and Hitchhiker, Schneider has immersed herself and scrutinised many aspects of suburban, peripheral, and scrubland America. Her characters, including herself, are never at the centre of cultural affairs. Such eccentricities as they might possess are all derived from what could be called their adjacent status to the dominant culture of America. In fact her works are often sated with references to the sentimental sub-strata that underpin so much of American daily life. It is the same whether it is flower gardens and household accoutrements of her photo-series Suburbia (2004), or the transitional and environmental conditions depicted in The Last Picture Show (2005). The artist’s use of sentimental song titles, often adapted to accompany individual images within a series by Schneider, show her awareness of America’s close relationship between popular film and music. For example the song ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’, becomes Leaving in a Jet Plane as part of The Last Picture Show series, while the literalism of the plane in the sky is shown in one element of this diptych, but juxtaposed to a blonde-wigged figure first seen in 29 Palms. This indicates that every potential narrative element is open to continual reallocation in what amounts to a story without end. And, the interchangeable nature of the images, like a dream, is the state of both a pictorial and affective flux that is the underlying theme pervading Schneider’s photo-narratives. For dream is a site of yearning or longing, either to be with or without, a human pursuit of a restless but uncertain alternative to our daily reality. The scenarios that Schneider sets up nonetheless have to be initiated by the artist. And, this might be best understood by looking at her three recent DVD sequenced photo-novels, Reneé’s Dream and Sidewinder (2005). We have already considered the other called Hitchhiker. In the case of Sidewinder the scenario was created by internet where she met J.D. Rudometkin, an ex-theologian, who agreed to her idea to live with her for five weeks in the scrubland dessert environment of Southern California. The dynamics and unfolding of their relationship, both sexually and emotionally, became the primary subject matter of this series of photographs. The relative isolation and their close proximity, the interactive tensions, conflicts and submissions, are thus recorded to reveal the day-to-day evolution of their relationship. That a time limit was set on this relation-based experiment was not the least important aspect of the project. The text and music accompanying the DVD were written by the American Rudometkin, who speaks poetically of “Torn Stevie. Scars from the weapon to her toes an accidental act of God her father said. On Vaness at California.” The mix of hip reverie and fantasy-based language of his text, echoes the chaotic unfolding of their daily life in this period, and is evident in the almost sun-bleached Polaroid images like Whisky Dance, where the two abandon themselves to the frenetic circumstances of the moment. Thus Sidewinder, a euphemism for both a missile and a rattlesnake, hints at the libidinal and emotional dangers that were risked by Schneider and Rudometkin. Perhaps, more than any other of her photo-novels it was the most spontaneous and immediate, since Schneider’s direct participation mitigated against and narrowed down the space between her life and the art work. The explicit and open character of their relationship at this time (though they have remained friends), opens up the question as the biographical role Schneider plays in all her work. She both makes and directs the work while simultaneously dwelling within the artistic processes as they unfold. Hence she is both author and character, conceiving the frame within which things will take place, and yet subject to the same unpredictable outcomes that emerge in the process. In Reneé’s Dream, issues of role reversal take place as the cowgirl on her horse undermines the male stereotype of Richard Prince’s ‘Marlboro Country’. This photo-work along with several others by Schneider, continue to undermine the focus of the male gaze, for her women are increasingly autonomous and subversive. They challenge the male role of sexual predator, often taking the lead and undermining masculine role play, trading on male fears that their desires can be so easily attained. That she does this by working through archetypal male conventions of American culture, is not the least of the accomplishments in her work. What we are confronted with frequently is of an idyll turned sour, the filmic clichés that Hollywood and American television dramas have promoted for fifty years. The citing of this in the Romantic West, where so many of the male clichés were generated, only adds to the diminishing sense of substance once attributed to these iconic American fabrications. And, that she is able to do this through photographic images rather than film, undercuts the dominance espoused by time-based film. Film feigns to be seamless though we know it is not. Film operates with a story board and setting in which scenes are elaborately arranged and pre-planned. Schneider has thus been able to generate a genre of fragmentary events, the assemblage of a story without a storyboard. But these post-narratological stories require another component, and that component is the viewer who must bring their own interpretation as to what is taking place. If this can be considered the upside of her work, the downside is that she never positions herself by giving a personal opinion as to the events that are taking place in her photographs. But, perhaps, this is nothing more than her use of the operation of chance dictates. I began this essay by speaking about the apparitional contents of Stefanie Schneider’s pictorial narratives, and meant at that time the literal and chance-directed ‘appearing’ qualities of her photographs. Perhaps, at this moment we should also think of the metaphoric contents of the word apparition. There is certainly a spectre-like quality also, a ghostly uncertainty about many of the human experiences found in her subject matter. Is it that the subculture of the American Dream, or the way of life Schneider has chosen to record, has in turn become also the phantom of it former self? Are these empty and fragmented scenarios a mirror of what has become of contemporary America? There is certainly some affection for their contents on the part of the artist, but it is somehow tainted with pessimism and the impossibility of sustainable human relations, with the dissolute and commercial distractions of America today. Whether this is the way it is, or, at least, the way it is perceived by Schneider is hard to assess. There is a bleak lassitude about so many of her characters. But then again the artist has so inured herself into this context over a long protracted period that the boundaries between the events and happenings photographed, and the personal life of Stefanie Schneider, have become similarly opaque. Is it the diagnosis of a condition, or just a recording of a phenomenon? Only the viewer can decide this question. For the status of Schneider’s certain sense of uncertainty is, perhaps, the only truth we may ever know.

1 Kerry Brougher (ed.), Art and Film Since 1945: Hall of Mirrors, ex. cat., The Museum of Contemporary Art (New York, 1996) 2 Im Reich der Phantome: Fotographie des Unsichtbaren, ex. cat., Städtisches Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach/Kunsthalle Krems/FotomuseumWinterthur, (Ostfildern-Ruit, 1997) 3 Photoworks: When Pictures Vanish – Sigmar Polke, Museum of Contemporary Art (Zürich-Berlin-New York, 1995) 4 Slavoj Žižek, The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch’s Lost Highway, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, Seattle, Occasional Papers, no. 1, 2000. 5 Diane Arbus, eds. Doon Arbus, and Marvin Israel...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Dreamscape (Wastelands) - Proofs before Printing - only one available
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Dreamscape (Wastelands), Proof before Printing, 2003, Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, matte surface, based on an expired Polaroid, not mount...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Whisky and Water VI (Sidewinder) - Diptych, Polaroid, Nude, 21st Century, Color
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
'Whisky and Water VI' (Sidewinder), diptych - 2005 Edition 1/5, 45x36cm each, installed 45x80cm including gaps. 2 analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archi...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

Metal

Cristal (Till Death Do Us Part) - including the book 'A Half Forgotten Dream'
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Cristal (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 Including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 192 pages, hardcover, published by Snap Collective, 2024. 20x2...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Ground Control (Stranger than Paradise)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Ground Control (Stranger than Paradise) - 2008 40x40cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inv...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Leaving (Strange Love)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Leaving (Strange Love) - 2005 20x30cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a 35mm film. Signature label and certificate. Not mounted. In an age of in...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Black and White, C Print, Polaroid

Leaving (Strange Love)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Leaving (Strange Love) - 2005 20x30cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a 35mm film. Signature label and certificate. Not mounted. “I never remembe...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Black and White, C Print, Polaroid

Untitled (Paradise) - Contemporary, Nude, Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Untitled (Paradise) - 1999, 50x50cm. Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 18550. No...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Mountain Ridge (Stranger than Paradise) - Archival C-Print, 65x85cm
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Mountain Range (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 64x85cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 535. Signature labe...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Renée's Dream - The Boys (Days of Heaven) - Landscape, Horse, Boys
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Renée's Dream - The Boys (Days of Heaven). Part of the 29 Palms, CA project. - 2006 40x50cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signatur...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Untitled Sequence (Stranger than Paradise) - Polaroid, Landscape Photography
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Untitled (Cowboys and Angels) - 2005 39x50cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. artist Inventory No...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Olancha (Stranger than Paradise) - 6 pieces
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Olancha (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999, 6 pieces Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs, 98x96cm each, 205x302cm installed with gaps. 6 archival C-Prints, based on the 6 Polaroids. S...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Male Nude VI (29 Palms, CA) - Polaroid, Contemporary, 20th Century, Color
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Male Nude in Bathroom (29 Palms, CA), - 1999, Edition 1/10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, 20x20cm, digital C-Print, Not mounted, based on a Polaroid, Signature label and Certificate, Art...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

3 Stefanie Schneider Polaroid sized unlimited Minis 'Radha Mind Screen' - signed
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
3 Stefanie Schneider Polaroid-sized unlimited Minis 'Radha Mind Screen' - 1999 - triptych signed in front, not mounted. 3 Digital Color Photographs based on the 3 Polaroids. 10.7...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

Archival Paper, C Print, Color, Lambda, Polaroid

Rapture (29 Palms, CA) - Polaroid, Contemporary, Color
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Rapture (29 Palms, CA) - 2022 48x46cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival Print, based on the Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 218829. Signature label and Certificate...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Through the looking Glass (Deconstructivism) - Contemporary, Expired Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Through the looking Glass (Deconstructivism) - 2015 - about the narrative potential of images. 50x50cm, Edition of 10, digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid, Artist Inventory 2027...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Blue Fingernails (29 Palms, CA) - Polaroid, Contemporary
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Blue Fingernails (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 50x50cm, Edition of 10. digital C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist inventory number: 21083. Not mou...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Snap–15 Minutes of Fame (Wastelands) - analog, not mounted, Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Snap–15 Minutes of Fame (Wastelands) - 4 pieces, 2003 Edition of 5, 105x100cm each, 220x220cm installed. Analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper,...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Untitled (Olancha) - Stranger than Paradise - analog C-Print based on a Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
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...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Love - Contemporary, 21st Century, Polaroid, Figurative, Photograph, Nude
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Love (The Princess and her Lover) part of the 29 Palms, CA project, 2007, Edition of 1/10, 20x24cm. Digital C-Print based on a Polaroid. Not mounted. Signature label and Certifica...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Bedroom Plant (29 Palms, CA) - Polaroid, Contemporary
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Bedroom Plant (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certifica...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Living Room (29 Palms, CA) - Polaroid, Contemporary
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Living Room (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Mysteries of Love (Chicks and Chicks and sometimes Cocks)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Mystery of Love (Chicks and Chicks and sometimes Cocks) - 2017 20x24cm, Edition of 10. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Artist inventory 21300. Signature label and Certific...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Renée's Dream - The Boys (Days of Heaven) - Landscape, Horse, Boys
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Renée's Dream - The Boys (Days of Heaven). Part of the 29 Palms, CA project. - 2006, 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signature ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Untitled (Paradise) - Contemporary, Nude, Men, Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Untitled (Paradise) - 1999 50x50cm. Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 20451. N...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Wild Things (Till Death do us Part) Contemporary, Woman, Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Wild Things (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

Parchment Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Nothing to do with my will (The Princess and her Lover)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Nothing to do with my Will (The Princess and her Lover) - 2007 part of the 29 Palms, CA project. Edition of 10, 20x24cm. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signature labe...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Sonata (Deconstructivism) - Contemporary, Expired Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Sonata (Deconstructivism) - 2015 - about the narrative potential of images. 20x24cm, Edition of 10, digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid, Artist Inventory 20273. Signature label ...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Magic Mountain 12 (Memories of Green) - based on a Polaroid, analog, 21st Centur
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Magic Mountain 12 (Memories of Green), Edition 1/5 , 58x56cm, 2003 analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on a Polaroid, Artist inventory Nu...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Ripped (Deconstructivism) - Contemporary, Expired Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Ripped (Deconstructivism) - 2020 - about the narrative potential of images. 40x40cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid, Artist Inventory 4600. Signature lab...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Untitled 02 (Oxana's 30th Birthday) starring Radha Mitchell
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Untitled 02 (Oxana's 30th Birthday) - 2007 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist I...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Exercise (Suburbia) - Contemporary, Polaroid, Women, Pool
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Exercise (Suburbia) - 2004, 38x36cm, Edition of 10, digital C-Print based on an expired Polaroid. Artist Inventory #20953. Signature label with Certificate, unmounted. The project...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

The Empire (Strange Love) - Empire State Building, New York, Landscape
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
The Empire (Strange Love) 2005, 40x25cm, Edition of 10, digital C-Print, based on a 35mm analog Negative strip, signature label and certificate, artist Inventory No. 30000. Not mo...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Untitled (Paradise) - Contemporary, Nude, Men, Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Untitled (Paradise) - 1999, 50x50cm. Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 18420. No...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Male nude from the 29 Palms, CA series, 21st Century, Polaroid, Nude Photography
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Male Nude (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition 7/10. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 2...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Untitled - Oilfields
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
'Untitled' (Oilfields) 2004, 60x60cm, Edition 4/10, Analog C-Print, based on a Polaroid Certificate and Signature label, artist Inventory No. 1220.04 Not mounted. OILFIELDS, 2004...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Caitlin aka Jane Bond III Heavenly Falls - based on a Polaroid Original
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
'Caitlin aka Jane Bond III' (Heavenly Falls) - 2016 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid, Not mounted. Certificate and signature label, artist inventory ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

C Print, Color, Polaroid

Instructor (Suburbia) - Contemporary, Polaroid, Photography, Portrait
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Instructor (Suburbia) 2004, 20x24cm, Edition of 1/10, digital C-Print based on a Polaroid, not mounted, Signed on verso with Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 1680.01. This proje...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Borrego Springs (California Badlands) - Polaroid, 21st Century, Contemporary
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Borrego Springs (California Badlands) - 2016 24x20cm, Edition of 10. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 19329. Not mou...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Summer Interlude I (Deconstructivism) - Contemporary, Expired Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Summer Interlude I (Deconstructivism) - 2020 - about the narrative potential of images. 40x40cm, Edition of 10, digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid, Artist Inventory 5901. Signa...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Memory Lane (Haley and the Birds) - 29 Palms, CA - based on a Polaroid Original
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Memory Lane (Haley and the Birds) - 29 Palms, CA - 2013 78x76cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

The Prince (The Princess and her Lover) - Polaroid, Portrait, Dream
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
The Prince (The Princess and her Lover), 2007, part of the 29 Palms, CA project, Edition of of 10, 20x20cm, digital C-Print based on a Polaroid, Signature label and Certificate, a...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Abstract I (Sidewinder) - Contemporary, Expired Polaroid, 21st Century
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Abstract I (Sidewinder) - 2005 part of DECONSTRUCTIVISM - about the narrative potential of images. 20x20cm, Edition of 10, digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid, Artist Inventory 38...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

From a long forgotten Dream (Chicks and Chicks and sometimes Cocks)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
From a long forgotten Dream (Chicks and Chicks and sometimes Cocks) - 2019 20x20cm, Edition of 10. Digital C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Artist inventory 21582. Signature label an...
Category

2010s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Tropics Motor Motel II (Memories of Green)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Tropics Motor Motel II (Memories of Green) - 1999 Edition 1/10, 58x56cm. ANALOG C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid. Artist i...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Stefanie Schneider Minis - Runaway (Haley and the Birds)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Stefanie Schneider's Minis Runaway (Haley and the Birds) - 2013 signed and signature brand on verso Lambda digital Color Photographs based on the Polaroid Polaroid sized open Editi...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

Plexiglass, Archival Paper, Color, Lambda, Polaroid

Once We Were Warriors (Stage of Consciousness) starring Radha Mitchell
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Once We Were Warriors (Stage of Consciousness) - part of the 29 Palms, CA project - 2007 - featuring Radha Mitchell 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. digital C-Print, ...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Polaroid, Archival Paper

Daisy in front of Mirror - Polaroid, Figurative, Photograph, Nude
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Daisy in front of Mirror (Till Death do Us part) - 2005 Edition 1/5, 48x46cm, Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate....
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Art

Materials

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

Long Way Home, triptych
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Long Way Home (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 3 x 38x36cm, Edition of 30, Archival C-Prints, based on the 3 Polaroids Certificate and Signature label artist Inventory Nr. 250.51 ...
Category

1990s Contemporary Art

Materials

C Print, Color, Polaroid

Shop Art on 1stDibs: Photography, Drawings, Prints, Sculptures and Paintings for Sale

Whether growing your current fine art collection or taking the first steps on that journey, you will find an extensive range of original photography, drawings, prints, sculptures, paintings and more on 1stDibs.

Visual art is among the oldest forms of expression, and it has been evolving for centuries. Beautiful objects can provide a window to the past or insight into our current time. Art collecting enhances daily life through the presence of meaningful work. It displays an appreciation for culture, whether a print by Elizabeth Catlett channeling social change or a narrative quilt by Faith Ringgold.

Contemporary art has lured more initiates to collecting than almost any other category, with notable artists including Yayoi Kusama, Marc Chagall, Kehinde Wiley and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Navigating the waiting lists for the next Marlene Dumas, Jeff Koons or Jasper Johns has become competitive.

When you’re living with art, particularly as people more often work from home and enjoy their spaces, it’s important to choose art that resonates with you. While the richness of art with its many movements, styles and histories can be overwhelming, the key is to identify what is appealing and inspiring. Artwork can play with the surrounding color of a room, creating a layered approach. The dynamic shapes and sizes of sculptures can set different moods, such as a bronze by Miguel Guía on a mantel or an Alexander Calder mobile suspended over a table. A wall of art can evoke emotions in an interior while showing off your tastes and interests. A salon-style wall mixing eclectic pieces like landscape paintings with charcoal drawings is a unique way to transform a space and show off a collection.

For art meditating on the subconscious, investigate Surrealists like Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí. Explore Pop art and its leading artists such as Andy Warhol, Rosalyn Drexler and Keith Haring for bright and bold colors. Not only did these artists question art itself, but also how we perceive society. Similarly, 20th-century photography and abstract painting reconsidered the intent of art.

Abstract Expressionists like Helen Frankenthaler and Lee Krasner and Color Field artists including Sam Gilliam broke from conventional ideas of painting, while Op artists such as Yaacov Agam embraced visual trickery and kinetic movement. Novel visuals are also integral to contemporary work influenced by street art, such as sculptures and prints by KAWS.

Realist portraiture is a global tradition reflecting on what makes us human. This is reflected in the work of Slim Aarons, an American photographer whose images are at once candid and polished and appeared in Holiday magazine and elsewhere. Innovative artists Mickalene Thomas and Kerry James Marshall are now offering new perspectives on the form.

Collecting art is a rewarding, lifelong pursuit that can help connect you with the creative ways historic, modern and contemporary artists have engaged with the world. For more tips on piecing together an art collection, see our guide to buying and displaying art.

Find photography, drawings, paintings, prints and other art for sale on 1stDibs.

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