Contemporary Figurative Photography

Officer's Wives Club (29 Palms, CA), diptych - 1999 Edition of 23/25, 40x40cm each, installed 40x87cm, including gap. 2 Analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist, based on the 2 Polaroids. Signed on back with Certificate. Artist inventory number: 316. Mounted on Aluminum with matte UV-Protection. 29 PALMS, CA is a film / art piece that explores and chronicles the dreams and fantasies of a group of individuals who live in a trailer community in the Californian desert. The world depicted in the film is inspired by the photographs of German artist Stefanie Schneider in that it combines the notions of reality and fantasy and explores the resonance of both within a desert landscape and a transient culture. The characters portrayed in the film, (an actress, a singer, a DJ, a motel owner and his wife, a US army soldier, a mystic, a princess, a recluse, a movie ticket seller, two hitchhikers, a doctor, and so on), are to be played by both actors and non-actors. The story is constructed through the interpretation of real-life communications (i.e. phone calls, emails, conversations) that have taken place as the individuals depicted in the story try to make sense of events that have occurred in real life. In this sense, the story is, in part, a biography and social commentary, and the characters are the exaggerated alter egos of the individuals who play them. The structure of the plot is fairly simple. An actress working as a telemarketer is inspired by a singer who is new to town and is featured on the local radio station. The radio station runs a program for lonely hearts and a charismatic DJ uses the show to reveal the hopes and dreams of the town's “hottest women”. One night a panicked German female caller captivates the community with a painful story about a sexy “Smoke Jumper” (a mysterious and super real alpha male). Everybody in town is listening to the program and nobody is quite sure what to say. Life in general continues and we witness and explore the various interactions. The actress meets the singer and they become famous. The US Army soldier dies on his way to battle. The foreign princess discovers that the jewels she has come to sell are fake. The motel owner‘s wife has an affair with the pool boys and so on. All the while the community is united by their loyalty to the “Lonely Hearts” radio show and through the disturbing revelations of the German woman...

'Hill View Motel X' (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 One Original Polaroid - Unique Piece 1/1, 7.8 x 7,7cm (image area) 10.7 x 8.7 cm ( including white Polaroid frame) Artist inventory 21982.00 This Polaroid is of the artist Stefanie Schneider taken during her 29 Palms, CA photoshoot in 1999. Signed by Stefanie on the back with the inventory number of 21364, crossed out...

Young Duke (Chicks and Chicks and sometimes Cocks) - 2017 20x24cm, Edition of 10. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Artist inventory 22245. Signature label and Certificate. Not mounted. The 'Chicks and Chicks' series is part of my Desert Living Project, which encompasses all aspects of organic...

Stefanie Schneider's Minis - The size of a Polaroid. Untitled #8 (Beachshoot), 2005. Lambda digital Color Photographs based on the Polaroid. Signed and signature brand on verso. ...

'Untitled' by Stefanie Schneider (Oilfields) 2004, 60x60cm, Edition of 10, Analog C-Print, based on the Polaroid Certificate and Signature label artist Inventory Nr. 1215.05 Not mo...

Wind Power (California Badlands) - 2021 24x34cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 4595. Not mounte...

'Tears' - 2013 (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) 75x93cm, Edition of 5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, b...

Planet of the Apes XI, 1999, Edition 1/10, 40x40cm, Signature label and Certificate. not mounted, Stefanie Schneider received her MFA in Communication Design at the Folkwang Schul...

Untitled (29 Palms, CA), 1999, 20x24cm, Edition 1/10, Photograph printed on Velvet Watercolor, based on a Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label, not mounted Artist Inventory Num...

'Bates Motel' part 1 (The Last Picture Show) - 2005, 38x36cm, Edition 2/5, analog C-Print, hand-printed and enlarged by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, matte finish, b...

OK Corral - part 2 - (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999, 20 x 20 cm, Edition 5/10, Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid Artist Inventory 3182.18. Not mounted Stefanie Schneider's s...

The Dancer (Stay), 2006, 37x36cm, Edition of 2/5, Lambda Print, based on a Stefanie Schneider expired Polaroid photograph Certificate and Signature label artist Inventory Nr. 5315.10...

'Small Town Love' (Last Picture Show), 2006, 20x20cm, Edition 3/10. Digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label, artist Inventory No 1029.15, not mounted ...

Penny Lane and Dreamgirl (Chicks and Chicks and sometimes Cocks) - 2019 20x24cm, Edition of 10. Digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Artist inventory 19139. Signature label and Cer...

White Plastic Bucket (Stay), from Ryan Gosling's memory sequence. 2006, 85x85cm, 4 pieces, each 39x38.5cm, Edition 2/5, analog C-Prints, printed by the artist on Fuji Archive Crysta...

Stefanie Schneider's Minis 'Jules and Jim' (Reneé's Dream - 29 Palms, CA), 2007 signed and signature brand on verso Lambda digital Color Photographs base...

Girl at Fence (Last Picture Show) - 2005 58x56cm, Edition 1/5, Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist. Mounted on Aluminum with matte UV-Protection. Artist inventory number:...

Boccia VIII (Beachshoot) - 2005 30,7x30cm, sold out Edition of 68, Artist Proof 4/5 Lambda Print, based on a Polaroid Certificate and Signature label, artist Inventory # 1467. Not...

'Ryan Gossling' (Stay) - 2006, 20x20cm, Edition of 2/10, digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid Certificate and Signature label artist Inventory No. 2447.02 Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider: Torsten Scheid, “Fotografie, Kunst, Kino. Revisited.”, FilmDienst 3/2006, page 11-13

 Photography Art Cinema. Revisited Stay expands a traditional connection through new facets Interwoven between the media of photography and film is a veritable mesh-work of technical, motific, metaphorical and personal interrelationships. Extending from photo-film which, as in La Jetée by Chris Marker (France, 1962) is a montage of single, unmoving photographs all the way to the portrayal of photographic motifs in Hollywood cinema―most recently in Memento (USA, 2000) and One hour photo (USA, 2002)―is the range of filmic-photographic interactions on the one hand, and from the adaption of modes of cinematic production to the imitation of film stills on the other. For instance, with the legendary Untitled Film Stills (1978) of the American artist Cindy Sherman, who later made her debut as a film director with Office Killer (USA, 1997) and thereby, like many others, changed sides: Wim Wenders, Robert Frank and Larry Clark are doubtlessly the most successful of these photographic-filmic border crossers. This brief survey provides only a vague indication of the dimensions of this intermedial field, which in fact extends much further and is constantly being cultivated. Also as a motif in film, photography has experienced a historical transformation: Photographers were once considered to be technicians who mastered a craft but never achieved the status of artists. Photographer-figures were caught in the allure of beautiful appearance, incapable of penetrating to the actual essence of things. Such depth was reserved for literature or painting. When photography in film touched upon the sphere of art, then most often as its contrasting model, as the metaphor for a superficial access to the world. Coming to mind are Fred Astaire as a singing fashion photographer in Stanley Donen’s musical film Funny Face (USA, 1957), or the restless lifestyle-photographer in Michelangelo Antonioni’s genre-classic Blow up (GB, 1966). For the doubting Thomas, only that exists which can be photographed. He ultimately enters the world of fantasy and thereby the field of art only unwillingly, when he becomes entangled in the world of his images. The last of his detail-enlargements shows only the photographic grain and has lost all connection to reality. The photograph looks as if it had been painted by Bill, the painter who is both friend and antagonist to the protagonist.

 Photography as Art It was first around the end of the last century that numerous filmmakers discovered photography as a genuine art form. In The Bridges of Madison County (USA, 1995) a sensitive Clint Eastwood stands, camera in hand, on the threshold of artistic status, and in Smoke (USA, 1994) a tobacco merchant ripens into a philosopher through his involvement in photography. Finally, in John Water’s parody of the art market, Pecker (USA, 1998), a provincial tom-fool is hyped into celebrated stardom amid the New York art scene because of his blurred snapshots. This film about a postmodern Kaspar Hauser in photographic art (with clear parallels to Richard Billingham, the British shooting star of the nineteen-nineties), not only takes into account the exponentially expanded significance of photography in the art market, but also attributes to photography an extreme degree of conformity to the “operating system” of the visual arts. This admittedly ironic equation of photography and the visual arts is new. It is repeated with much more earnestness in Lisa Chollondencko’s High Art (USA) from the same year. Artistic photography has finally become established in a cinematic context.

 
Stay Stay (USA, 2005) could have fitted in seamlessly here. Considering that the films High Art and Pecker establish photography as an ideal art form at the end of the millennium, director Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland) takes a step backward; he revives an anti-technical, intuitive concept of art, including the customary clichés about madness and genius. This choice documents less an anachronistic notion of art (especially considering that painting is currently experiencing a Renaissance) than instead the appraisal that paintings are more suitable for representing the free objectification of the mind. Stay is not an artist-film but rather a psycho-thriller in which the borders between dream and reality become blurred.
 The psychiatrist Sam Foster (Ewan McGregor) has saved his girlfriend, the artist Lila (played by Naomi Watts) from committing suicide. Now he is attempting to keep another patient, the art student Henry Letham (Ryan Gosling...

Maiden Dance (Chicks and Chicks and sometimes Cocks) - 2017 Edition of 10, 50x50cm, Digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Artist inventory 20216. Not mounted. The 'Chicks and Chi...

Stefanie Schneider Minis - The size of a Polaroid. Untitled #6 (Beachshoot), 2005. featuring Radha Mitchell Lambda digital Color Photographs based on a Polaroid. Sandwiched in b...

Wind Power (California Badlands) - 2021 24x34cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 4595. Not mounte...