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Stefanie SchneiderFirst Steps (Heavenly Falls) - 21st Century, Polaroid, Women, Contemporary2016
2016
About the Item
First Steps (Heavenly Falls) 2016
50x48cm,
Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs.
Lambda Print based on the Polaroid
Certificate and signature label
artist inventory number: 19665.
Not mounted
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.
Why do you think it is important to own art?
'We have art in order not to die of the truth'
Nietzsche
- Creator:Stefanie Schneider (1968, German)
- Creation Year:2016
- Dimensions:Height: 19.69 in (50 cm)Width: 18.9 in (48 cm)Depth: 0.04 in (1 mm)
- More Editions & Sizes:20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Price: $380
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Morongo Valley, CA
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU652316222632
Stefanie Schneider
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.
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