Art

Please (Sidewinder) - 2005 48x60cm, Edition 1/10. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 3391. Not mounted. "private hist...

Lovefight (The Princess and her Lover) from 29 Palms, CA - 2009 120x180cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on 15 original Polaroids. Certificate and S...

Memory of a Dream (29 Palms, CA) - 2006 38x36cm, Edition 2/10. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature Label. Artist inventory Number 3602. Not...

Blowin' In The Wind I (The Last Picture Show) - 2002, 38x37cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature la...

Blowin' In The Wind III (The Last Picture Show) - 2002, 38x37cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature ...

If I was a different Girl (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 48x58cm, Edition of 10. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 94...

The Betrayal - The Getaway (The Last Picture Show) - 1999 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist Inventory #723. ...

Village Motel Sunset (Stranger than Paradise) - 2005 20x20cm, sold out Edition of 5, Artist Proof 2/2 (the very last from this edition), Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid, ...

Untitled (Cathy and Shannon) - 2004 20x20 cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid Certificate and Signature Label Artist Inventory No. 481 N...

Tropics Motor Motel I (Memories of Green) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition 1/10, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on a Polaroid, Artist inven...

A Vision you can't Capture (29 Palms, CA) - 2007 125x172cm, Edition 2/5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid, signature label and certificate, artist inventory number: 4048. Mounted on Aluminum with matte UV-Protection. Schneider harnesses the unpredictable chemical mutations of expired Polaroid film, where bursts of color erupt across the surface, destabilizing the photograph's traditional allegiance to reality. These vivid distortions draw her characters into ethereal, trance-like dreamscapes. Like fleeting sequences from a vintage road movie, Schneider’s images shimmer with a transitory quality, dissolving before any definitive conclusions can be drawn. Their ephemeral essence is conveyed through subtle gestures and enigmatic motives. Refusing to yield to the constraints of reality, Schneider’s work keeps alive a delicate interplay of dream, desire, fact, and fiction, blurring the boundaries between them with poetic ambiguity. Stefanie Schneider’s work echoes the heart of American art, channeling the cinematic nostalgia of Ed Ruscha’s roadscapes, the stark sensuality of Georgia O’Keeffe’s deserts, and the haunting solitude of Edward Hopper...

Lost in Blue I (Till Death do us Part) - 2005, 50x49cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inve...

'Primary Colors' (Stranger than Paradise) - 2001 each 20x20cm plus 5 cm in between each print together, 70x70cm, sold out Edition of 10, Artist Proof 2/2, Archival C-Print print,...

Wild Child (Chicks and Chicks and sometimes Cocks) - 2019 - 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid Artist inventory 22252. Signature l...

Stefanie Schneider Polaroid sized unlimited Mini 'Fairy (Heavenly Falls)' - 2016 - signed in front, not mounted. 1 Archival Color Photograph based on the original Polaroid. Pola...

A Vision you can't Capture, #01 (29 Palms, CA) - 2007 125x172cm, Edition of 5, analog C-Print printed on Fuji Archive Paper, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid, N...

'Hot Tub' (Heavenly Falls) - 2016 50x50cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid, Certificate and signature label, artist inventory number: 19715.08 Not mounted. ...

Oasis (Sidewinder), 2005, Edition 3/5, 16 pieces each 48x47cm analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist, printed on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on Polaroids mounted on Aluminum with matte UV-Protection, based on an expired Polaroids, Artist inventory Number 3001.03 Installation shot at 'Mulholland Distilling' in LA with Danny Fox...

Strange Math (The Princess and her Lover) - 2007 part of the 29 Palms, CA project. Edition of 10, 20x24cm. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certif...

Mountains (Strange Love) - 2003 40x60cm, Edition of 5 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a 35mm film. Signature label and certificate. Not mounted. A piece of Ste...

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 Sc...

Snow (Strange Love) - 2003 50x75.5cm, Edition of 5 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a 35mm film. Signature label and certificate. Not mounted. A piece of Stefan...

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...

Love Scene against the Wall (Sidewinder), part 4 - 2007 40x40cm, Edition of 10. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 3277. ...

Buried (Stranger than Paradise) - 2003 Edition of 5 plus 2 Artist Proofs. 38x36cm each, 90x175cm installed. 8 Analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive P...

Cabazon Dinosaurs (Drive to the Desert) - 2000 44x59cm, Edition 5/5. Analog C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #155.05. Not mount...

Girl Nude (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, 50x50cm, Archival C-Print, Not mounted, based on the Polaroid, Signature label and Certificate, Artist inve...

Springtime (Suburbia) - 2004 20x24cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid, Signed on verso with Certificate, Artist inventory number: 18251. Not mounted. Thi...

The Princess and her Lover, 2007 Edition of 10, 20x24cm, digital C-Print based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist I...

Memory of a Dream (29 Palms, CA) - 2006 38x36cm, Edition 2/10. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature Label. Artist inventory Number 3602. Not mounted....

'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...

'Daisy on Bed' (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 38x47cm, Edition of 30 Archival C-Print print, based on the Polaroid, Certificate and signature label, ar...

Springtime (Suburbia) - 2004 50x60cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid, Signed on verso with Certificate, Artist inventory number: 18251. Not mounted. Thi...

Living in a Dream (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label, artist Inventory No. 9781. Not mounted. on offer is a piece from the movie "Till Death do us Part" Stefanie Schneider’s Till Death Do Us Part or “There is Only the Desert for You.” BY DREW HAMMOND Stefanie Schneider’s Til Death to Us Part is a love narrative that comprises three elements: 1. A montage of still images shot and elaborated by means of her signature technique of using Polaroid formats with outdated and degraded film stock in natural light, with the resulting im ages rephotographed (by other means) enlarged and printed in such a way as to generate further distortions of the image. 2. Dated Super 8 film footage without a sound track and developed by the artist. 3. Recorded off-screen narration of texts written by the actors or photographic subjects, and selected by the artist. At the outset, this method presupposes a tension between still and moving image; between the conventions about the juxtaposition of such images in a moving image presentation; and, and a further tension between the work’s juxtaposition of sound and image, and the conventional relationship between sound and image that occurs in the majority of films. But Till Death Do Us Part also conduces to an implied synthesis of still and moving image by the manner in which the artist edits or cuts the work. First, she imposes a rigorous criterion of selection, whether to render a section as a still or moving image. The predominance of still images is neither an arbitrary residue of her background as a still photographer—in fact she has years of background in film projects; nor is it a capricious reaction against moving picture convention that demands more moving images than stills. Instead, the number of still images has a direct thematic relation to the fabric of the love story in the following sense. Stills, by definition, have a very different relationship to time than do moving images. The unedited moving shot occurs in real time, and the edited moving shot, despite its artificial rendering of time, all too 2009often affords the viewer an even greater illusion of experiencing reality as it unfolds. It is self-evident that moving images overtly mimic the temporal dynamic of reality. Frozen in time—at least overtly—still photographic images pose a radical tension with real time. This tension is all the more heightened by their “real” content, by the recording aspect of their constitution. But precisely because they seem to suspend time, they more naturally evoke a sense of the past and of its inherent nostalgia. In this way, they are often more readily evocative of other states of experience of the real, if we properly include in the real our own experience of the past through memory, and its inherent emotions. This attribute of stills is the real criterion of their selection in Til Death Do Us Part where consistently, the artist associates them with desire, dream, memory, passion, and the ensemble of mental states that accompany a love relationship in its nascent, mature, and declining aspects. A SYNTHESIS OF MOVING AND STILL IMAGES BOTH FORMAL AND CONCEPTUAL It is noteworthy that, after a transition from a still image to a moving image, as soon as the viewer expects the movement to continue, there is a “logical” cut that we expect to result in another moving image, not only because of its mise en scène, but also because of its implicit respect of traditional rules of film editing, its planarity, its sight line, its treatment of 3D space—all these lead us to expect that the successive shot, as it is revealed, is bound to be another moving image. But contrary to our expectation, and in delayed reaction, we are startled to find that it is another still image. One effect of this technique is to reinforce the tension between still and moving image by means of surprise. But in another sense, the technique reminds us that, in film, the moving image is also a succession of stills that only generate an illusion of movement. Although it is a fact that here the artist employs Super 8 footage, in principle, even were the moving images shot with video, the fact would remain since video images are all reducible to a series of discrete still images no matter how “seamless” the transitions between them. Yet a third effect of the technique has to do with its temporal implication. Often art aspires to conflate or otherwise distort time. Here, instead, the juxtaposition poses a tension between two times: the “real time” of the moving image that is by definition associated with reality in its temporal aspect; and the “frozen time” of the still image associated with an altered sense of time in memory and fantasy of the object of desire—not to mention the unreal time of the sense of the monopolization of the gaze conventionally attributed to the photographic medium, but which here is associated as much with the yearning narrator as it is with the viewer. In this way, the work establishes and juxtaposes two times for two levels of consciousness, both for the narrator of the story and, implicitly, for the viewer: A) the immediate experience of reality, and B) the background of reflective effects of reality, such as dream, memory, fantasy, and their inherent compounding of past and present emotions. In addition, the piece advances in the direction of a Gesammtkunstwerk, but in a way that reconsiders this synaesthesia as a unified complex of genres—not only because it uses new media that did not exist when the idea was first enunciated in Wagner’s time, but also because it comprises elements that are not entirely of one artist’s making, but which are subsumed by the work overall. The totality remains the vision of one artist. In this sense, Till Death Do Us Part reveals a further tension between the central intelligence of the artist and the products of other individual participants. This tension is compounded to the degree that the characters’ attributes and narrated statements are part fiction and part reality, part themselves, and part their characters. But Stefanie Schneider is the one who assembles, organizes, and selects them all. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THIS IDEA (above) AND PHOTOGRAPHY This selective aspect of the work is an expansion of idea of the act of photography in which the artistic photographer selects that which is already there, and then, by distortion, definition or delimitation, compositional and lighting emphasis, and by a host of other techniques, subsumes that which is already there to transform it into an image of the artist’s contrivance, one that is no less of the artist’s making than a work in any other medium, but which is distinct from many traditional media (such as painting) in that it retains an evocation of the tension between what is already there and what is of the artist’s making. Should it fail to achieve this, it remains, to that degree, mere illustration to which aesthetic technique has been applied with greater or lesser skill. The way Til Death Do Us Part expands this basic principle of the photographic act, is to apply it to further existing elements, and, similarly, to transform them. These additional existing elements include written or improvised pieces narrated by their authors in a way that shifts between their own identities and the identities of fictional characters. Such characters derive partially from their own identities by making use of real or imagined memories, dreams, fears of the future, genuine impressions, and emotional responses to unexpected or even banal events. There is also music, with voice and instrumental accompaniment. The music slips between integration with the narrative voices and disjunction, between consistency and tension. At times it would direct the mood, and at other times it would disrupt. Despite that much of this material is made by others, it becomes, like the reality that is the raw material of an art photo, subsumed and transformed by the overall aesthetic act of the manner of its selection, distortion, organization, duration, and emotional effect. * * * David Lean was fond of saying that a love story is most effective in a squalid visual environment. In Til Death Do Us Part, the squalor of the American desert...

Renée's Dream - The Boys (Days of Heaven). Part of the 29 Palms, CA project. - 2006, 20x24cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signatu...

The Games we played (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 50x50cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 artist proofs. Archival C-Print print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label, a...

Untitled (Traintracks) - The last Picture Show - 2004 50x50cm. Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist ...

What are we gonna do? (Till Death Do Us part) - 2005 24x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. artist...

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 rememb...

Moving in Together (Till Death do us Part) - Installation - 2008 Edition of 5. 16 analog C-Prints , hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on 13 Polaroids, ...

3 Stefanie Schneider's Minis from the movie Stay: 'Forgive me', 'Lila', 'Jellyfish' with Naomi Watts Signed in front, not mounted Lambda digital C...

The Games we played (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 artist proofs. Archival C-Print print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label, a...

First Kiss (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory ...

Male Nude VI (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist inventory number...

So Still (Sidewinder), 2005 Edition 2/5, 128x130cm, Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and signat...

Untitled 03 (Saigon) - 2003 58x56cm, Edition of 5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by an artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, matte surface, based on the Polaroid. Artist invento...

Stefanie Schneider Polaroid sized unlimited Mini 'Haley and the Birds' - 2013 - signed in front, not mounted. 1 Digital Color Photographs based on a Polaroid. Polaroid sized ope...

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...

Outback Dreams - 29 Palms, CA - 2010 50x130cm. Archival C-Print, based on the 3 original Polaroids. Signature label and certificate. Artist Inventory # 1933. Not mounted. THE G...

Dusk (The Last Picture Show) - 2005 Edition 4/5, 38x36cm each, 131x127cm installed including gaps. 9 Analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist on Archive Fuji Crystal Paper, based...

'Jimi Hendrix Palm Trees' (Stranger than Paradise) - 2016 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label, Not mounted. "Jimi He...

Almost Paradise (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 894. Signature label and Certificate. Not mounted. For sale is a piece from the Wastelands series. Reality with the Tequila: Stefanie Schneider’s Fertile Wasteland by James Scarborough “How much more than enough for you for I for both of us darling?” (E. E. Cummings) Until he met her, his destiny was his own. Petty and inconsequential but still his own. He was cocksure and free, young and unaccountable, with dark hair and aquiline features. His expression was always pensive, a little troubled, but not of a maniacal sort. He was more bored than anything else. With a heart capable of violence. Until she met him, she was pretty but unappreciated. Her soul had registered no seismic activity. Dustbowl weary, she’d yet to see better days. A languorous body, a sweet face with eyes that could be kind if so inclined. Until she met him, she had not been inclined. It began when he met her. She was struck in an instant by his ennui. The sum of their meeting was greater than the imbroglios and chicaneries of their respective existences. He was struck by the blank slate look in her eyes. They walked, detached and focused on the immediate, obscenely unaware of pending change across a terrain of mountainous desert, their eyes downcast and world-weary, unable to account for the buoyant feeling in her heart. His hard-guy shtick went from potentiality to ruse. The gun was not a weapon but a prop, a way to pass time. Neither saw the dark clouds massing on the horizon. They found themselves alone in the expanses of time, unaware of the calamity that percolated even as they posed like school kids for the pictures. Happiness brimmed in that wild terrain. Maybe things were beginning to look up. That’s when the shooting started… Stefanie Schneider assumes that our experience of lived reality (buying groceries, having a relationship with someone, driving a car) does not correspond to the actual nature of lived reality itself, that what we think of as reality is more like a margarita without the tequila. Stefanie Schneider’s reality is reality with the tequila. She does not abolish concepts that orient us, cause and effect, time, plot, and storyline, she just plays with them. She invites us to play with them, too. She offers us a hybrid reality, more amorphous than that with a conventional subject, verb, and predicate. Open-ended, this hybrid reality does not resolve itself. It frustrates anyone with pedestrian expectations but once we inebriate those expectations away, her work exhilarates us and even the hangover is good. An exploration of how she undermines our expectation of what we assume to be our lived reality, the reasons why she under- mines our expectations, and the end result, as posited in this book, will show how she bursts open our apparatus of perception and acknowledges life’s fluidity, its density, its complexity. Its beauty. She undermines expectations of our experience of reality with odd, other-worldly images and with startling and unexpected compressions and expansions of time and narrative sequence. The landscape seems familiar enough, scenes from the Old West: broad panoramic vistas with rolling hills dotted with trees and chaparral, dusty prairies with trees and shrubs and craggy rocks, close-up shots of trees. But they’re not familiar. These mis-en-scenes radiate an unsettling Picasso Blue Period glow or the intense celestial blue of the cafe skies that Van Gogh painted in the south of France. Yellow starbursts punctuate images as if seen through the viewfinder of a flying saucer. At the same time, objects appear both vintage and futuristic, the landscape of a post-apocalyptic world. Landscapes change seemingly at random as do the seasons. Stefanie Schneider offers no indication of how time flows here, except that it conceivably turns in on itself and then goes its merry way. Time is a river whose source is a deep murky spring which blusters about with an occasional swirling eddy. That Stefanie Schneider thwarts an easy reading is obvious but why does she do this? Since she will not countenance anything linear, logical, or sequential, and because she does not relish anything concrete and specific, she has to roil things up a bit. Nor does she seem comfortable with a book of images that is settled, discrete, and accountable. Instead she wants to create a panoply of anxious moments...

Outtake (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist inventory Nu...

My Darling come to me (Till Death do us Part) - 2016 40x40cm, Edition of 10. Archival C- Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist inventory number: 9...

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...

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...

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...

1 Stefanie Schneider Mini 'Male Nude' - 1999 - signed in front, not mounted. 1 Digital Color Photographs based on a Polaroid. Polaroid sized open Editions 1999-2016 10.7 x 8.8cm...