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Stefanie Schneider
Day Worker (American Depression) - Original Polaroid Unique Piece
1999

Name: Day Worker (American Depression) - Original Polaroid Unique Piece
Brand: Stefanie Schneider
Price: 1661.99 AUD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.9 (36 reviews)

About the Item

Day Worker (American Depression) - 1999 Original Polaroid - Unique Piece 1/1. 10.7 x 8.7 cm. Artist inventory 20662.00. Signed on back. Stefanie Schneider’s work is a meditation on time—its erosion, its persistence, its ability to fracture and reassemble in the mind’s eye. Like faded dreams or half-remembered encounters, her Polaroid images exist in a liminal space where past and present bleed into one another, never quite whole, never truly lost. Her process itself is an act of defying time. The expired Polaroid film she employs carries within it the chemical scars of its own history, yielding unpredictable mutations that transform each image into an artifact of imperfection. These distortions are not merely aesthetic choices but echoes of memory—relics of moments that refuse to remain static. In an era of hyper-clarity and digital perfection, Schneider’s art invites us to embrace the ephemeral, to find beauty in the decayed and the transient. The American West, a landscape steeped in myth and reinvention, becomes the perfect backdrop for this exploration of time’s paradoxes. Her subjects—wandering figures in motels, trailer parks, and endless deserts—are suspended between nostalgia and an uncertain future, much like the film she captures them on. They exist in a cinematic loop, their stories unfolding and dissolving, caught in the glow of a setting sun that never fully disappears. But there is a deeper shift at play, one that mirrors the changing nature of artistic life itself. Before 2020, artists thrived on movement, on exposure, on a constant dialogue between places and people. Travel was a necessity, a lifeline to new influences and inspirations. Yet, in the wake of global upheaval, a hyper-isolationist existence has taken hold, where the act of creation unfolds within a contained world. Schneider’s desert sanctuary reflects this new reality—an alternate universe born from necessity, a space where time stretches and bends inward, echoing the dreamlike qualities of her work. The outside world receded, but within this solitude, another form of freedom emerged: the ability to construct a world entirely of one’s own making. Memory, like Schneider’s images, is imperfect. It shifts, it fades, it distorts. Yet, in these imperfections, new narratives emerge—ones that feel more real than reality itself. This is the power of Schneider’s work: to remind us that time is not linear but layered, that the past is never truly past, and that every moment carries the weight of all that came before. Her work is not just a preservation of a vanishing medium—it is a meditation on the nature of remembrance itself. In every blurred silhouette and chemical wash of color, she captures what it means to hold onto time even as it slips through our fingers, to relive and reinterpret, over and over again, the memories we think define us. Schneider’s images are time capsules, not of fixed moments, but of the way moments feel—a testament to how time warps, erases, and ultimately reveals. They are not just photographs; they are fragments of time, unraveling like film caught in the projector’s glow, forever flickering between memory and dream. 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. “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”)

Creator:
Stefanie Schneider (1968, German)
Creation Year:
1999
Dimensions:
Height: 4.22 in (10.7 cm)Width: 3.43 in (8.7 cm)Depth: 0.08 in (2 mm)
Medium:
Polaroid
Movement & Style:
Contemporary
Period:
1990-1999
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Morongo Valley, CA
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU652316222592

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

Stefanie Schneider
Dreamgirl I (29 Palms, CA) - analog, mounted, 1999

$1,430 Sale Price

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