Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 6

Stefanie Schneider
Wonder Valley (29 Palms, CA) - analog, mounted, installation, music, video, text

2008

About the Item

Wonder Valley (29 Palms, CA) - 2008 125x154cm, Edition of 5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid, artist inventory number: 3648.02, Not mounted The works of Stefanie Schneider evoke Ed Ruscha's obsession with the American experience, the richness of Georgia O'Keefe's deserts and the loneliness of Edward Hopper's haunting paintings. So how exactly did this German photographer become one of the most important artists of the American narrative of the 20th and 21st century? Stefanie Schneider was born and raised in Germany but lives and works in Southern California. Exploring the American dream and capturing it with Polaroid instant film. Situated on the verge of an elusive super-reality, her photographic sequences provide the ambience for loosely woven story lines and a cast of phantasmic characters that reflect a part of the narrators life told from her perspective. Often about love, communication. sexuality and relationships. Schneider works with the chemical mutations of expired Polaroid film stock. Chemical explosions of color spreading across the surfaces undermine the photograph's commitment to reality and induce her characters into trance-like dreamscapes. Like flickering sequences of old road movies Schneider's images seem to evaporate before conclusions can be made - their ephemeral reality manifesting in subtle gestures and mysterious motives. Schneider's images refuse to succumb to reality, they keep alive the confusions of dream, desire, fact, and fiction yet they also explore the relationship with the medium and the viewer. The wabi-sabi 'ness' of Schneider's work can not be denied or ignored. It's a step of acceptance of 'flaws', gaps and distortions. Missing pieces of the puzzle. The artist flaunts, uses and exposes the unknown using expired Polaroid instant film intentionally. Presents it. What you do with that is up to you. That missing part of the picture is for you to include yourself, you fill it in with yourself. That might be critical that it's there at all, missing and missing the entire point all together or by filling in the unknown with their own imagination. Even their own memories which then integrates the viewer and artist as one with limitless potential. Stefanie Schneider's new photographic works tell fantastic stories about her adopted Californian home. She seeks out faded American myths and distills a charged reality in a very personal and surprising way. She uses out-of-date Polaroid film, and the blemishes caused by the degenerated film stock, - are included in the composition in a painterly way. Exposure mistakes and low budget movie effects are combined to alienating effect. Everything shimmers and flickers before our eyes. The artist plays with the authentic poetry of the amateur, mixing strangely dreamy staging with random photochemical events. In the 16-part work Frozen, which is characterized by a strangely transcendent mood in the lighting, film-still-like pictorial clusters come together to form a mysterious story, with the artist herself as the lonely protagonist. the aesthetic is reminiscent of early Lynch films. The components of the elliptically choreographed events are scenes from an enchanted, gleaming winter landscape, together with "staged snapshots" of a pale young woman in her underskirts, who radiates the troubled reality of a mirage with her sleep walking presence. The story is presented in the manner of cinematic flashbacks or dream sequences. Stage blood and a knife are used to evoke a crime of passion whose surreal attractiveness is derived from the scenic openness of what is shown. The deliberate use of old instant picture stock establishes in a richly faceted way the ephemeral quality of vulnerability and transience within a reality that is brittle from the outset. The American Stars and Stripes, recently updated as the absolute epitome of a patriotic signifier, is the subject of the 9-part work Primary Colors (2001). Schneider's reassuringly European view, free of undue emotion, presents the Stars and Stripes motif in a strangely alienated form: she shows stills with phases of fluttering violently in the wind, even torn in some cases, and the expired film stock emphasizes the fragility of the icon even more. FlashART - Sabine Dorothee Lehner (translated from German by Michael Robinson) published in: STRANGER THAN PARADISE published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, 2006, (monograph) exhibition: 2008: Les Rencontres d'Arles - Photo Festival South of France (G), nominated for the Discovery Award / 29 Palms, CA, Galerie Spesshardt-Klein, Berlin (S) & Forum Expanded / Berlinale Presentation / 2009: 29 Palms, CA, Moravian Gallery, (Museum of Applied Arts), Brno, Czech Republic (S) / 2010: Mapping Worlds: Welten verstehen – Aufbruch in die Gegenwart, 8. Internationale Foto -Triennale Esslingen, Germany, curated by Andreas Baur (G) with Shirana Shahbazi, Roselyne Titaud, Olaf Unverzart, Lidwien van de Ven, Stephen Wilks (catalog) / 2011 Mirror of broken Dreams, Galerie Robert Drees, Hannover, Germany, (S)

More From This Seller

View All
Wonder Valley (29 Palms, CA) - analog, mounted, installation, music, video, text
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Wonder Valley (29 Palms, CA) Installation by Stefanie Schneider. Dimensions: 250x400cm Video by Camille Waldorf. Song written & performed by Camille Waldorf. Text, song and video i...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Mixed Media

Materials

Metal

Wonder Valley (29 Palms, CA) - analog, mounted, installation, music, video, text
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Wonder Valley (29 Palms, CA) - 2008 125x154cm, Edition of 5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid, artist inventory nu...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Mixed Media

Materials

Metal

Till Death Do Us Part - analog hand print, 160x125cm
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Till Death do us Part (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2007 Edition of 5, 160x125cm. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid. Sig...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Black and White Photography

Materials

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

Guadalupe (The Last Picture Show) - mounted, analog, Polaroid, Contemporary
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Guadalupe (The Last Picture Show) - 2005 38x37cm, Edition 1/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Archive Fuji Crystal Paper, based on the Polaroid. Mounted on Alumi...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Metal

Mindscreen 03 - Contemporary, analog, vintage print, mounted
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Mindscreen 03 - 1999 Edition 1/5. 126x126cm including the white frame. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid. Signed on the back with Certificate. Artis...
Category

1990s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Metal

White Picket Fence (Suburbia), diptych, analog, mounted, Polaroid, Photograph
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
White Picket Fence (Suburbia), diptych, 2004, Edition of 3/5, 60x80cm each, installed 60x170cm, Analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist, based on 2 Polaroids, Mounted on Alum...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Metal

You May Also Like

Fleur Du Mal - Black & White Original Polaroid Photograph by Pia Clodi Framed
By Pia Clodi
Located in Zürich, CH
Fleur Du Mal - Black & White Original Polaroid Photograph by Pia Clodi Framed Not unlike many of Pia Clodi’s works, Fleur Du Mal is a celebration of the ana...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Polaroid

Paris Walks I - Framed Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph
By Pia Clodi
Located in Zürich, CH
Paris Walks - Contemporary Black & White Polaroid Original Photograph Framed Pia Clodi’s works encompass moments and mementos from her countless walks through cities as well as nat...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Polaroid

Paris Walks III - Contemporary Original Framed Landscape Polaroid Photograph
By Pia Clodi
Located in Zürich, CH
Paris Walks III - Contemporary Original Framed Landscape Polaroid Photograph Pia Clodi’s works encompass moments and mementos from her countless walks through cities as well as nat...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Polaroid

Paris Walks II - 21st Century Black & White Original Polaroid Photograph Framed
By Pia Clodi
Located in Zürich, CH
Paris Walks - Contemporary Black & White Polaroid Original Photograph Framed Pia Clodi’s works encompass moments and mementos from her countless walks through cities as well as nat...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Polaroid

New York IV - Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph
By Pia Clodi
Located in Zürich, CH
New York IV - Framed Contemporary Polaroid Photograph Like much of Pia Clodi's work, 'New York IV' leaves a trace of the fast, nomadic life she leads,. Here, a photograph of a hig...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Polaroid

Sevilla - Contemporary Black & White Polaroid Landscape Analog Photograph
By Pia Clodi
Located in Zürich, CH
Sevilla - Framed Original Black & White Polaroid Photograph Like much of Pia Clodi's work, 'Sevilla' leaves a trace of the fast, nomadic life she leads. In this instance, Clodi is...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Polaroid

Recently Viewed

View All