Early 2000s Color Photography

Memory Sequence (Stay) - 2006 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory # 2273 Not mounted. Stefanie ...

Childhood Memories (Stay) - 2006 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory # 2261 Not mounted. Stefan...

Big Boy (Stay) - 2006 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory # 2266 Not mounted. Stefanie Schneide...

Indian Summer V (The Last Picture Show) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print print, based on the Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label Artist...

Memory Sequence (Stay) - 2006 with Ryan Gosling 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 2058. N...

Large scale photograph by Michael Banks - Archival Pigment print on fiber based paper ( Hahnemühle Photo RAG Baryta 315 gsm ) Water element 2 - Limited ...

Best Friend (Stay) - 2006 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 2030. Not mounted. Stefanie ...

Sunny Boy (Stay) - 2006 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 2000. Not mounted. Stefanie Sc...

Indian Summer III (The Last Picture Show) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print print, based on the Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label Artist Inventory No 18549. Not mounted. 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 dream scapes. 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., Bombay Beach Biennale 2018 / 2019. “It was Stefanie Schneider, who inspired me to start the company THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT after seeing her work, which seems to achieve the possible from the impossible, creating the finest of art out of the most basic of mediums and materials. Indeed, after that one day, I was so impressed with her photography that I realized Polaroid film could not be allowed to disappear. Being at the precise moment in time where the world was about to lose Polaroid, I seized the moment and have put all my efforts and passion into saving Polaroid film. For that, I thank Stefanie Schneider almost exclusively, who played a bigger role than anyone in saving this American symbol of photography.” –Florian Kaps, March 8th 2010 (“Doc” Dr. Florian Kaps, founder of “The Impossible Project”) What makes Stefanie Schneider’s work so unique is that it’s immediately recognizable. Perfect ‘wabi-sabi’ in appearance and content. Dream like, colorful with depth and vision. From start to finish, a truly self made artist with a distinctively female perspective. Exhibitions Selected (selected) 2018 Participation Bombay Beach Biennale, Bombay Beach, USA (G) March Available to All, Rough Play Projects - Site Specific, Joshou Tree, USA (G) curated by Deborah Martin with Adam Berg, Doron Gazit, Kellan Barnebey, Chris Sanchez, Aili Schmelzt 2017 BLICKFELD Analoge Fotografie, Kommunale Galerie Steglitz-Zehlendorf (G) (catalog), (upcoming)
 Rosegallery, Bergamot Station, Santa Monica (G) Magie des Moments, Kunstverein Bad Homburg Artlantis, Bad Homburg (G) 2016 
Instantdreams, Instantdreams Gallery, Berlin 

(S) 2015
 Desert Voices, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) with Pamela Littky The Ballery in Heat, The Ballery, Berlin (G) 
Blue Nudes, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) 

 2014

 Summer Show, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (G) 6 Finalists, Saatchi Gallery London (G) 
Instantdreams, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (S)
Grand Opening, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) with Banksy, Andy Warhol, Alison Bignon, Sophie Dickens, Victor Gingembre and others
 2013 
Heather's Dream, Short, nominated for the German Short Film Award 2013 (Deutscher Kurzfilmpreis)
Images For Images (Artists fir Tichy), GASK - Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region,  Kutná Hora, Czech Republic, (G) with Richard Prince, Nan Golding, Shirana Shahbazi, Sophie Calle, Martin Kippenberger, Arnulf Rainer, Thomas Ruff, Katharina Grosse, Jonathan Meese & others (catalog) 
The Girl behind the White Picket Fence, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (S)
 Heather's Dream, Short, German Competition Short Film Festival Oberhausen 
Multimedia Presentation with Artist Stefanie Schneider, Palms Springs Art Museum, Annenberg Theater
 The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, (G) with Ansel Adams, Bruce Charlesworth...

Total edition of 7 Signed and numbered, verso This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. “Sailboats and Swans” is a series of portraits of prisoners in Russia ...

Pile Up (Stay) - 2006 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 1955. Not mounted. Stefanie Schn...

Blue Sky Palm Trees (Sidewinder) - 2005 including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 196 pages, hardcover, published by snap Collective, 2024. 20x...

Brooklyn Bridge 09 (Stay) - 2006 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 1571. Not mounted. St...

SPC Curtis Jones, 22, El Paso, 554th MP Co (standing), PFC Brian Niess, 18, Lake Ann, Michigan, 554th MP Co (sitting), Forward Operating base Kamdesh, Afghanistan Digital C-print Si...

Digital C-print Signed and numbered, verso 20 x 20 inches (Edition of 10) 30 x 30 inches (Edition of 5) This photograph is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Please no...

Brooklyn Bridge 06 (Stay) - 2006 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 1568. Not mounted. St...

Brooklyn Bridge 05 (Stay) - 2006 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 1567. Not mounted. St...

Windmills of your Mind (29 Palms, CA) - 2013 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 16640. Not mounted. In Stefanie Schneider's evocative piece "Her Last Call," she presents a poignant scene featuring the talented actor Heather Megan Christie. The composition centers around a captivating image of Christie holding a red rotary phone...

Cinderella (29 Palms, CA) - 2008 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #5721. No...

Xtreme (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid photograph. Artist inventory Number 909. 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...

A Sunny Morning (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature la...

John Dolan’s photographs revel in the extraordinary that lies beneath everyday, fleeting occurrences. And in this eloquent collection of twenty images shot in ravishing color and bla...

A fabulous signed, limited-edition photo of Lady Gage, shot by international celebrity photographer Markus Klinko (bio below) for the 35th Anniversary of Hello Kitty in 2009. We offe...

Michael & Delilah, photograph from Richard Heeps 'Burlesque' Series, this contemporary portrait is so cool and cinematic. Richard became well-known for his Burlesque Photography afte...

Set of four framed square artworks from Richard Heeps Dream in Color series. Nine Feet - La Concha Motel Pool, Las Vegas, 2001 Chairs - La Concha Motel Pool, Las Vegas, 2000 Steps -...

You don't love me! (Till Death do us Part) - 2008 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label...

The Existence is disintegrating into the Heat of the Desert Sirocco (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2015 40x48cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print...

Starlight (Haley and the Birds) - 2013 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #...

Farewell (Haley and the Birds) - 2013 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory # ...

Brilliant Shadow (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 22720. Signature labe...

The Man (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 22884. Signature label and Cer...

Digital C-print Signed and numbered, verso 20 x 20 inches (Edition of 10) 30 x 30 inches (Edition of 5) This photograph is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Please no...

Stefanie Schneider's Mini Airstream (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 signed in front, not mounted. Digital Color Photographs based on the Polaroids. Polaroid sized open Editions 1999-2023 10....

Blooded (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 22991. Signature label and Cer...

Total edition of 7 Signed and numbered, verso This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. “Sailboats and Swans” is a series of portraits of prisoners in Russia ...

Last Chance (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 24104. Signature label and...

Brass Shell (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 905. Signature label and C...

Expanses of Time (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 1193. Signature label...

Randy (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 1180. Signature label and certi...

Shells and Impact (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 5/10. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 1188. Signature label and Certificate. Not mounte...

Michael WOLF (1954 – 2019, Germany) Transparent City #62, 2007 C–print Sheet 182.9 x 233.7 cm (72 x 92 in.) Frame 190 x 240 x 5 cm (74 3/4 x 94 1/2 x...

Train Crosses Plain (Wastelands) - 2003 20x25cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 544. Signature labe...

Digital C-print (Edition of 10) Signed, dated, and numbered, verso 30 x 35.5 inches, sheet 22 x 27 inches, image This photograph is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Please note that prices increase as editions sell. Joshua Lutz is an American artist working with large-format photography and video. Lutz began photographing the Meadowlands ten years ago as a a documentary study of the 32-square-miles of marshy wilderness that sits between New Jersey and New York (while ostensibly searching for the remains of Jimmy Hoffa). Over the years, however, this project evolved into a compelling artistic exploration, revealing the soul of this liminal space. Lutz was given his first solo exhibition at Gitterman Gallery during the summer of 2004. In 2008, “Meadowlands,” was published as Lutz's first book, with powerHouse Books. In essayist Robert Sullivan’s introduction to the monograph, he describes the Meadowlands as “. . .that giant swath of swamp and space that separates New Jersey from New York City, or, put another way, from New York City and the rest of the United States of America.” “The New Yorker” wrote: “Joshua Lutz takes the New Topographics...

Randy and I - (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 1171. Signature label a...

Hide Out (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 1168. Signature label and Cert...

Chromogenic print on Kodak Endura paper Signed and numbered on label, verso 24 x 20 inches (Edition of 4) 61 x 50 inches (Edition of 6) This photograph is offered by ClampArt, loca...

Prepping (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 20x24cm, Edition 2/10. Archival C-Print. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 7716. Not mounted. In this captivating ...

Archival pigment print Signed, dated, and inscribed in pencil, verso 22 x 17 inches, sheet 16.75 x 11 inches, image This photograph is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City.

Chromogenic print on Kodak Endura paper Signed and numbered on label, verso 24 x 20 inches (Edition of 4) This photograph is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. At first...

Signed and numbered, verso This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. “The Black Eye” continues Michal Chelbin’s exploration of the world of athletes and perfor...

Philippe Cheng (American, b. 1961) "Untitled, Greece, 2005", signed, titled and dated verso, C-print (chromogenic print) mounted on aluminum with UV ultra non-glare plexiglass P...

Mitigating circumstances (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. A...

Flying (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 part of the 29 Palms, CA project. 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #7870. Not mounted. LIFE’S A DREAM (The Personal World of Stefanie Schneider) 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...

Flying (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 part of the 29 Palms, CA project. 40x48cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #7980. Not mounted. LIFE’S A DREAM (The Personal World of Stefanie Schneider) 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...

Digital C-print (Edition of 11) Signed, dated, and numbered, verso From the series, "Rune Lagu" This photograph is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Please note that pr...

Game Lover, Olympic Games Beijing 2008 is an original Photo realized by Matteo Basilé. This artwork is from the portfolio The Unique Collection for the O...

Signed and numbered, verso This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. The images in this series are an attempt to capture human stories in everyday life, those ...

Denny's (29 Palms, CA) - 1997 50x49cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Signature label and certificate. Artist Inventory 9847. Not ...

Carwash (29 Palms, CA) - 1997 50x49cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Signature label and certificate. Artist Inventory 9848. Not ...

Sweet Williams, Flower Photo The Tappen House, Little Compton, RI (Rhode Island). Hand signed and numbered. small edition of 15, This one is marked proof...