Art

On the Run (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 Inventor...

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...

Actor Girl II (Stage of Consciousness) - 2008 including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 192 pages, hardcover, published by Snap Collective, 2024....

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 The fact that Schneider uses out-of-date Polaroid film stock to take her pictures only intensifies the sense of their apparitional contents when they are realised.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...

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...

Untitled 08 (Saigon) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist Inventory #19813. Not ...

Untitled (Paradise) - 1999 20x20cm. Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 361. Not...

The Party is over (Cyndi Lauper) from the 'Bring Ya to the Brink' record Album) - 2009 50x50cm, Edition of 10. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature ...

Into the Wild (Stranger than Paradise) - 2001, 32x52cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid, Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 2896. Not m...

The Tears we cried (Till Death do us Part) - 2007, 20x20cm, Edition of 10. Digital C-Print print, based on a Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 8583. N...

Burned (Self Portrait), 1999 Edition of 2/10, 20x20cm Print on Velvet Watercolor, 310gsm, No OBAs, Bright White, Acid Free based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. N...

When would forever be a good time? part II (Till Death do us Part) - 2007, 20x24cm, Edition of 10, digital C-Print print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label, ...

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...

'Memories of Love' (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 50x50cm. Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and signature ...

The Blue Pill to forget (Burned) - Self Portrait 1999, Edition of 2/10, 40x40cm Print on Velvet Watercolor, 310gsm, No OBAs, Bright White, Acid Free based on...

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...

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...

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, ...

The Diva (Beachshoot) - 2005 50x50cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid Certificate and Signature label, artist Inventory # 1461. Not mounted. Beachshoot St...

Something (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 40x40cm, Edition of 10. Archival C- Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist inventory number: 9445. Not mou...

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...

Blue Space Dark - Mindscreen 09 (Night on Earth) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the original Polaroid. ...

Untitled (Cathy and Shannon) - 2004 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 490...

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...

The Decision - The Getaway (The Last Picture Show) - 1999 50x50cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Artist Inventory #762. Signature label and Certificate. Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider's photographs evoke scintillating moments suspended between daydreams and waking reality. Each scene, captured in the southwestern United States, radiates a surreal enchantment. The artist's role appears minimal yet pivotal, providing the decisive impulse that sets the imagery into motion. The figures in her photographs remain as elusive as the motivations behind their actions, and the narratives woven through her sequences are tantalizingly open to interpretation. Atmospheric disturbances in Schneider's work emerge as the result of a deliberate narrative arrangement, compelling viewers to navigate between visual mementos and the gaps in memory they conjure. Yet, her artistry is no less purposeful in its engagement with medium. Despite the inherent unpredictability of expired Polaroid film, Schneider wields it with calculated intent. The photo-chemical self-developing process, altered by age and decay, transforms the initial exposure into something alien yet mesmerizing. This dysfunction is a cornerstone of MIND SCREEN, a multi-part work that explores the fragility of reality, authenticity, and comprehension. Schneider juxtaposes this brittleness with a magical realism steeped in chimeras, crafting dreamlike sequences that resist definitive narratives. She entrusts viewers with the responsibility of piecing together presumed storylines, refusing to offer a manual for interpretation. Instead, her work draws us into a realm where the unreal reigns—shimmering scenes that evoke the mirage of a road movie, a moment of violence, or a tragic self-sacrifice. Film genres are invoked and subverted in a single breath: Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders is reimagined through a rose-tinted lens, Thelma...

Blue House (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 20x20cm each, 20x68cm installed with gaps, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. 3 Archival C-Prints, based on the 3 original Polaroids. Signature...

Stevie in Bathub (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, printed on Fuji Crystal Archive, based on the Polar...

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...

Orange Flowered Couch at Sunset (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 Edition 1/10, 20x20cm, Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid Artist inventory Number 19762 Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider:...

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. "...

Untitled (Cowboys and Angels)- 2005 Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs - 100x60cm. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 1...

Jules and Jim II (Renée's Dream) from the 29 Palms, CA series - 2007 125x123cm, Edition 3/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the original Polaroid. Certific...

Circle of Magic - Shazam (29 Palms, CA) - 2009 20x24cm, Edition 6/10. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #2823.06. Not m...

What Are We Gonna Do? (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 Including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 192 pages, hardcover, published by Snap Collective...

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 02 (Saigon) - 2003 Sold out Edition of 5, Artist Proof 2/2, 20x20cm, Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 471. Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider...

Airstream (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 48x47cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 280. Not mounted. A Germ...

Untitled (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 50x50cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print print, based on the Polaroid, Certificate and Sig...

Princess' Kiss (Chicks and Chicks and sometimes Cocks) - 2018 49x48cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature labe...

Untitled (Paradise) - 1999, 20x20cm. Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 18550. ...

Untitled (Beachshoot) - 2005 128x125cm, Edition 4/5. Analog C-Print, hand-Printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certifi...

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...

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...

White Tank, Joshua Tree (My own Private Travel Diary) - 1999, 43x59cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Cer...

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 ...

She need not move (Sidewinder) - 2005 24x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Signature label and certificate. Artist Inventory 3298...

Waiting (Ensign Broderick record Shoot 'Blood Crush') - Bombay Beach, CA - 2019 40x40cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature lab...

The Kiss (Sidewinder) - 2005 125x154cm, Edition 2/5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, based on the original Polaroid. Signed on verso. Artist Inventory No. 3120.02. Mounted on Aluminum with matte UV-Protection. This piece ships in a crate. 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...

Primary Colors (Stranger than Paradise) - 2001 Edition 1/5, 9 pieces, each 48x47cm, installed 159x156cm including 5 cm gap in between each piece. 9 Analog C-Prints, hand-printed by...

Conception (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 40x40cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #9157. Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider's photographs evoke scintillating moments suspended between daydreams and waking reality. Each scene, captured in the southwestern United States, radiates a surreal enchantment. The artist's role appears minimal yet pivotal, providing the decisive impulse that sets the imagery into motion. The figures in her photographs remain as elusive as the motivations behind their actions, and the narratives woven through her sequences are tantalizingly open to interpretation. Atmospheric disturbances in Schneider's work emerge as the result of a deliberate narrative arrangement, compelling viewers to navigate between visual mementos and the gaps in memory they conjure. Yet, her artistry is no less purposeful in its engagement with medium. Despite the inherent unpredictability of expired Polaroid film, Schneider wields it with calculated intent. The photo-chemical self-developing process, altered by age and decay, transforms the initial exposure into something alien yet mesmerizing. This dysfunction is a cornerstone of MIND SCREEN, a multi-part work that explores the fragility of reality, authenticity, and comprehension. Schneider juxtaposes this brittleness with a magical realism steeped in chimeras, crafting dreamlike sequences that resist definitive narratives. She entrusts viewers with the responsibility of piecing together presumed storylines, refusing to offer a manual for interpretation. Instead, her work draws us into a realm where the unreal reigns—shimmering scenes that evoke the mirage of a road movie, a moment of violence, or a tragic self-sacrifice. Film genres are invoked and subverted in a single breath: Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders is reimagined through a rose-tinted lens, Thelma...

Summertime (Malibu) - 2004 Edition 4/5, 39x37cm. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 660.04. Mounted on Aluminum with matt...

Nastasia with Gun (High Desert) - 2019 Edition 1/10, 50x50cm, Digital C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider: A German...

Memories of Love II (The Girl Behind the White Picket Fence), 2013 including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 192 pages, hardcover, published by S...

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...

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...

Hillview Motel (Stranger than Paradise) - triptych, 2003 Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. 20x66cm installed, 20x20cm each. 3 archival C-Prints, based on the 3 original Polar...

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 ...

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 ...