Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 5

Stefanie Schneider
General Store - 29 Palms, CA

2007

$2,145.74
£1,591.93
€1,800
CA$2,937.63
A$3,291.09
CHF 1,713.01
MX$40,079.20
NOK 21,821.47
SEK 20,549.67
DKK 13,705.51
Shipping
Retrieving quote...
The 1stDibs Promise:
Authenticity Guarantee,
Money-Back Guarantee,
24-Hour Cancellation

About the Item

General Store (29 Palms, CA), 2007, 38x49cm, Edition 4/5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, matte surface, based on a Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label, artist Inventory No. 5405.02 unmounted THE GREATER THE EMPTINESS THE GRANDER THE ART – Stefan Gronert Not “Twenty-six Gasoline Stations” but “29 Palms, CA”! Forty-two years after Ed Ruscha’s legendary book, there is no gasoline station at the beginning of the book that is here at hand. Instead it is the open hearted Radha – with orange hair, pink-colored overalls and a bashful, or rather cunning, gaze that is directed downward – with which this book begins! And with her and with Max – attention: a woman –, one whose appearance is in accordance with the same styling, it comes to an end as well – after Radha has in the meantime colored her fingernails pink, again endowed with the same open heartedness and the same look which now, however, reveals in combination with her altered facial expression an “old-maidish” turning away from the viewer. This may serve as an example for a vivid and understandable transformation which flows into a large-scale representation of a cheerless settlement beneath a shining, blue sky – there a figure, lost straightaway, becomes overwhelmed. Pictures which in 1998/99 play in the harsh California sunlight or in spaces that are not exactly cozy and comfortable. “Play” is the correct word in this regard, for precisely in view of the pictures of persons, there remains more than just doubt as to whether we are looking at staged scenes or have simply happened upon the high-strung “reality” of a (wannabe) film world. Yet not all the pictures have the same character of a glaring, plastic world. Upon flipping through the pages, we also encounter unpretentious, literally “colorless” scenes in undefined interiors, or unspectacular views resembling a still life and opening out onto a nowhere land. That which connects all participants in these picture-worlds is the observation that they appear to be exhausted, lost, empty or uncertain about their existence. One is almost reminded of the empty gazes and loneliness of the protagonists in the pictures of large cities painted by Manet or Degas in the era of Early Modernism. With one exception, all the photographs which are reproduced here, which originally measure 60 by 70 cm but which here, in their present size and configuration, make productive use of the possibilities presented by the medium of the book, manifest several elements of B-movies: smoking, naked, made-up and muscular persons who are not inclined to conform entirely to the vision of Hollywood dreams. Beauty and vexation, eroticism and loneliness enter into a mixture which reveals the rift between desire and truth. From a distance, one is reminded of the “Untitled Film Stills” of Cindy Sherman, which in this regard are not nearly as drastic. Yet whereas her photos from the seventies are characterized by a cool, objective mode of representation in historicizing blackand-white, the photographs of Stefanie Schneider evince a soft, sometimes seemingly pictorial visual language with a coloration ranging from the pale to the artificial-glaring. As in many other pictures of Stefanie Schneider which often present themselves to us as sequences, these photos refer back as well to the perceptual stereotypes of film. Making use of instant photography, proceeding from which significantly enlarged C-prints come into being, her pictures summon up the impression of a narration without ultimately becoming part of a plot that is readable in a linear fashion. The illusion of the narrative element, however, simply enhances the experience of a renunciation of just this aspect. For the picture titles as well – and also the title of this publication – provide no real help with the imaginary construction of a story. Nevertheless, names return which include the first name of the artist herself: hence is everything not in fact a game but rather a series of authentic and instantaneous images, or is it after all nothing other than a staging, a game – how real is life? The paucity of plot elements, which contradicts all expectation of a cinematic style, as well as the emptiness and loneliness of the persons, enters into a peculiar, sometimes seemingly surreal association with the magic of the sun-drenched expanses of the dreamlike landscape. Just as the fantasy and imagination of the viewer are stimulated, so to the same great extent does the redemption of these visual figures of love founder on a void whose glaze is created, not least of all, by the peculiar blurriness of the photographic representation. The seemingly amateur character of these pictures, which have in no way been treated with any excessive scrupulousness, leaves us with a stimulating incertitude as to their interpretation, one in which the spheres of reality, fiction or dream are scarcely capable any longer of being differentiated. Thus the gaps and the scenic openness of what is presented ultimately set in motion a self-appraisal. So what remains after “29 Palms, CA”? Perhaps that hope which deviates from the saying of Ruscha that is quoted in the title: The stronger the photography the better the reality will be! Translated by George Frederick Takis Stefanie Schneider lives and works in the California High Desert and Berlin Stefanie Schneider's scintillating situations take place in the American West. 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. 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. Stefanie Schneider received her MFA in Communication Design at the Folkwang Schule Essen, Germany. Her work has been shown at the Museum for Photography, Braunschweig, Museum für Kommunikation, Berlin, the Institut für Neue Medien, Frankfurt, the Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden, Kunstverein Bielefeld, Museum für Moderne Kunst Passau, Les Rencontres d'Arles, Foto -Triennale Esslingen.

More From This Seller

View All
To Some Degree (29 Palms, CA) - including the book 'A Half Forgotten Dream'
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
To Some Degree (29 Palms, CA) - 2009 including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 192 pages, hardcover, published by Snap Collective, 2024. 20x20c...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Black and White Photography

Materials

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

The Ranch (29 Palms, CA) - based on a Polaroid
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
The Ranch (29 Palms, CA) - 2010 40x40cm, Edition of of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Digital C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist Inventory # 1935...
Category

1990s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

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

Harmony Motel (29 Palms, CA)
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Harmony Motel (29 Palms, CA) - 2006, Edition of 10, 60x80cm, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, on Fuji Crystal Archival Paper, matte surface, based on the Polaroid. Ce...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Figurative Photography

Materials

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

Campbell Kitchen (29 Palms, CA)
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Campbell Kitchen (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 Edition of 10, 58x56cm. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, printed on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper (matte), based on the Polaroid. ...
Category

1990s Contemporary Still-life Photography

Materials

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

Desert Living (California Dreaming) - Contemporary, 21st Century, Polaroid
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Desert Living (California Dreaming) - 2017 20x24cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 21292. Not mounted. The simplicity of 'flawed beauty' comes from the expired film I use to create a reflection of love and loneliness.
 The dream is actually turning into a nightmare. It's easier to deny than to utter the truth of defeat. (ruin). 
That we are all finite is irrefutable but we just don't want to believe it. I chose Polaroid film because it portrays color like candy making...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Desert Living (California Dreaming) - Contemporary, 21st Century, Polaroid
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Desert Living (California Dreaming) - 2017 20x24cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Invento...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

You May Also Like

Abandoned House, Arizona, USA, black and white photography, landscape, limited
By Gerald Berghammer
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Black and white fine art landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 9. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to order in limited editions on Ha...
Category

2010s Contemporary Black and White Photography

Materials

Digital Pigment, Archival Ink, Archival Paper

Home On The Range, YP Ranch Desert Camp, NV
By Adam Jahiel
Located in Sante Fe, NM
For years, Jahiel has been photographing the cowboys of the Great Basin–perhaps one of the most inhospitable regions of the already rugged West. These people represent one of the l...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Black and White Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Abandoned Hut, desert, California, USA, black and white photography, landscape
By Gerald Berghammer
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Black and white fine art landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print, edition of 9. Signed, titled, dated and numbered by artist. Certificate of authenticity included. Printed ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Black and White Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Mexican Border, Camping, Arizona, USA, black and white landscape art photography
By Gerald Berghammer
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Black and white fine art landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 9. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to order in limited editions on Ha...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Photographic Film, Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Black and White, Digita...

The Bait Farm, Silver Springs, Nevada
By Teri Havens
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Last Light There is solace in the night. I find it comforting when the sun finally slips away, taking with it the expectations and disappointments of the day. Darkness shrouds th...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Black and White Photography

Materials

Platinum

Abandoned, House, Desert, Arizona, USA, black and white, landscape, photography
By Gerald Berghammer
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Black and white fine art landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 9. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to order in limited editions on Ha...
Category

2010s Contemporary Black and White Photography

Materials

Digital Pigment, Archival Ink, Archival Paper