Horizontal Landscape Photography

Cyd Fontaine (Lausanne, 1992) is a contemporary artist renowned for her captivating use of dreamy atmospheric gradients, which has helped her carve a distinctive niche in the world o...

Hilltop, limited edition, archival pigment ink photograph, signed and numbered When looking at Julie Blackmon’s “Hilltop,” notice the elements that are in motion: the grass on the h...

Fairy Forest Study 1, Portugal - no. 21299 Printed on Hahnemuehle Photo Rag Baryta. Each print is stamped on the back and signed, numbered and accompanied by a letter of authentic...

Mountains (Strange Love) - 2003 40x60cm, Edition of 5 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a 35mm film. Signature label and certificate. Not mounted. A piece of Ste...

Slim Aarons Estate Limited Edition C print 40 x 30 inches / 101 x 76 cm unframed. ' Poolside Party ' A poolside party at a desert house, designed by Richard Neutra for Edgar J. K...

From the Vanishing Vernacular series. Vanishing Vernacular features a selection of color works by photographer Steve Fitch focusing primarily on the distinctive, idiosyncratic, and ...

'Woman with ice Cream' is a black and white photographic print on Hahnemuhle paper in a limited edition of 10 by Michael Ormerod. Featured in the 2024 posthumous solo exhibition, '...

"How the West Was Won" Texas, USA 2020 Available Sizes (Framed Size) Large: 71” x 91” Edition of 12 Standard: 52” x 65” Edition of 12 This work is sourced directly from the artist. Framed Digital Pigment Print on Archival 315gsm Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Baryta Paper Hand-signed in lower right by artist. This photo comes with a with Certificate of Authenticity About David Yarrow David Yarrow was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1966. He took up photography at an early age and as a 20-year-old found himself working as a photographer for The London Times on the pitch at the World Cup Final in Mexico City. On that day, David took the famous picture of Diego Maradona holding the World Cup and, as a result, was subsequently asked to cover the Olympics and numerous other sporting events. Many years later David established himself as a fine art photographer by documenting the natural world from new perspectives and the last nine years have been career-defining. David’s evocative and immersive photography of life on earth is most distinctive and has earned him an ever-growing following amongst art collectors. His large monochrome images made in Los Angeles are on display in leading galleries and museums across Europe and North America. He is now recognised as one of the best-selling fine art...

Boschereccia Palazzo Hercolani, Bologna, Italy 2022 50 x 62.5 inches ed. of 10 $6,000 60 x 75 inches ed. of 7 $9,000 70 x 87.5 inches ed. of 5 $11,000 signed and numbered on labe...

Finely detailed hand tinted color landscape photograph of Stanford Memorial Church produced by Bear Photo Service (American, 1930s). Photographer is unknown. Numbered 904 bottom right. Displayed in a rustic gilt-toned wood frame with antique glass. Image size: 7"H x 11"W. Stanford Memorial Church is located on the Main Quad at the center of the Stanford University...

Aerial Views, Tulip Fields 08 is a limited-edition photograph by German contemporary artist Bernhard Lang. This photograph is sold unframed as a print only. It is available in 3 di...

Tom Sullam Photography Flight II is a print of different planes flying in different directions. The picture is in negative (black) colours with the majority of the picture being da...

Artist Statement For me, an artistic process is an act of investigation – a passionate attempt to establish an understanding of the natural world – a version that incorporates both i...

Skiing Waiters, 1962 - Skiing on Snowy Slope with Pheasant and Champagne by Slim Aarons 16" x 16" print on 16" x 20" paper. Limited Edition Estate Stamped Print. Edition of 150. Pri...

"Malibu's Most Wanted" Photography 45" x 60" inch Edition of 3 by Brendan North Available sizes: Edition of 15: 18" x 24" inch Edition of 7: 27" x 36" inch Edition of 3: 45" x 60" i...

Mint Condition Hand printed by artist. Signed and numbered by artist. Cibachrome paper. Framed in off white metal.

Limited Edition of 6 More sizes on request Sebastian Copeland is considered a photographer "who has created works of outstanding artistic quality and conveys messages of urgent glob...

Black and white fine art long exposure waterscape - landscape photography. Skogafoss gigantic waterfall, Iceland. Archival pigment ink print, edition of ...

Villa at El Cuarton, 1971 - Spanish Moorish Architecture Sculpture Pool by Slim Aarons 16 x 20" print. Limited Edition Estate Stamped C-Print. Edition of 150. Printed Later. Bather...

"Spirit of the Camargue" In this iconic black and white image, the Camargue horses wild, untamed essence is on full display. Coupled with their all-white coats and bold features, th...

A solitary oak tree is backlit by the glow of sunrise at dawn along a trail. The scene is a hiking trail in the hills of Oakland, California. This is a one-off mini studio proof. A h...

Kate Breakey's artistic process is an act of investigation – a passionate attempt to establish an understanding of the natural world – a version that incorporates both intellectual a...

This black and white photograph, taken in 1962 at the Coral Pink Sand Dunes, located on the Utah-Arizona border, captures a moment of solitude and contemplation. The image features a...

A Vision you can't Capture, no 03 (29 Palms, CA) - 2007 37x49cm, Edition 2/5, analog C-Print printed on Fuji Archive Paper, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid, Not mo...

Holidaymakers waterskiing in front of the Carlton Hotel, Cannes, 1958. Cannes Water Sports, Carlton Hotel 1958 C Print Estate stamped and hand numbered edition of 150 with certifi...

*22x30" editions and 24x36" editions are platinum prints. Editions with a width of 60" or greater are archival pigment prints* Baobabs are one of Africa’s natural wonders: they can ...

This silver gelatin print is signed in ink on the front of the mount beneath the image with title in pencil on the back of the mount. Likely printed in the early 1960s. From the co...

Leonard Dalsemer and his family at their villa in Lyford Cay, New Providence Island, April 1974. This image features a classic Slim Aarons contrast: between the manmade and the beauty of nature. It's an expertly composed scene of midcentury glamour that still feels casual and light. The azure blue of the sky contrasts with the deeper blues and aquas of the sea, and the sparkling turquoise of the pool. While human figures anchor the scene, the expertly captured contrast of natural grandeur and architectural geometry make this scene truly magnificent. Image Description: In the background, leafy green palm trees and other trees blow in the breeze before a bright azure sky and slightly deeper blue ocean surf. In the foreground, two couples walk the pool deck in pastel pink and green clothing. Three children play in the turquoise pool. A verdant green hedge lines the front of the image, anchored by seven white florals in white pots. In the background is a pool cabana...

Ochre Room, Havana, Cuba, 2014 Edition of 10 + 2AP Archival Pigment Print Framed “These works present my abiding interest in the thresholds that divide and connect the sea to land. ...

These are three 11 x 8.5 inch (45 x 60 cm) original hand-printed original cyanotype photographs sold together. Cyanotypes are an antique photographic process dating back to the nine...

SEASCAPE I Diptych ( framed ) by Frank Schott from a series of photographic works capturing the sea blue color palette of the ocean 2 Panels 86.75 x 58 inches / 220.35cm x 147.3cm ...

DEJAVU Trailer, captured on a sunny spring day, on one of Richard Heeps' many visits, capturing the trailer in the fen landscape as it changes with the seasons. Taken in 2018 is was ...

Miguel Winograd's work explores the relationship between people and their environment, narratives of social conflict, and the dense interconnections of the Colombian landscape. His w...

Franco Fontana (Italian, born 1933) Title: Los Angeles, California 1979 Edition 6/15 Medium: dye-transfer Dimensions: Frame 21.5 x 29.25. Sight 13 x 19.5 Provenance: Monique Goldstrom Gallery Franco Fontana (Italian, 1933) is an Italian photographer. He is best known for his Minimalist abstract colour landscapes. He was influenced by Minimalism and Abstract Expressionism. Franco Fontana was born in 1933 in Modena. He started taking photographs in the 1950s when he was working as a decorator in a furniture showroom. In 1961 he joined a local amateur club in Modena. The experience would be a turning point in his career, and Fontana went on to have his first solo exhibition in 1965 at the Società Fotografica Subalpina, Turin and at the Galleria della Sala di Cultura in Modena in 1968. Since then he has participated in more than 400 group and solo exhibitions including the exhibit Lines, Spheres and Glyphs at Robert Klein Gallery with works by photographers: Franco Fontana, Mario Giacomelli, Ernst Haas, Gyorgy Kepes and Aaron Siskind. Franco Fontana is considered one of the most relevant photographers of our time, In 1963 he exhibited his work at the Biennale of Color in Vienna, and in 1968 he held his first solo exhibition in Modena. Fontana often pares landscapes down to their essential elements, producing flat, geometric compositions reminiscent of the color field abstract expressionist paintings of Mark Rothko Ad Reinhardt and Barnett Newman, by underexposing his transparencies. Contrasting blue skies with green or yellow grass and the rigid lines of buildings with the softness of puffy clouds, he makes color and texture his primary subjects. He has also shot in Polaroid film, Cibachrome, C Print and chromogenic prints. His art has been acquired by some of the most important museums worldwide, including the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, MoMA in New York, Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Museum of Modern Art in Norman, Oklahoma, National Gallery in Beijing, Australian National Gallery in Melbourne, University of Texas in Austin, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum, Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris. Fontana has photographed for advertising campaigns for brands such as Fiat, Volkswagen, Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane, Snam, Sony, Volvo, Versace, Canon, Kodak, Robe di Kappa, Swissair, and has been a magazine photographer for publications including Time, Life, Vogue (USA and France), Venerdì di Repubblica, Panorama, and with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and The New York Times. Fontana's first book, Skyline, was published in 1978 in France by Contrejour and in Italy by Punto e Virgola with a text by Helmut Gernsheim. Fontana is the art director of the Toscana Foto Festival. He has received numerous awards, such as the 1989 Tokyo Photographer Society of Japan - The 150 Years of Photography - Photographer Award. Fontana is especially interested in the interplay of colours. His early innovations in colour photography in the 1960s were stylistically disruptive. According to art critic Giuliana Scimé, Fontana "destroyed all the structures, practices, and technical choices within the Italian tradition." Fontana uses 35mm cameras, and as noted by Iwan Zahar, deploys distant viewpoints with telephoto lenses to flatten contours in a landscape of crops and fields into bands of intense, saturated colour. This is an effect that Franco Lefèvre has described as 'dialectical landscapism'. Of his use of colour in his 2019 retrospective exhibition Sintesi ('Synthesis') at Fondazione Modena Arti Visive, curator Diana Baldon has observed; “His bold geometric compositions are characterised by shimmering colours, level perspectives and a geometric-formalist and minimal language, By adopting this approach during the 1960s, Fontana injected a new vitality into the field of creative colour photography for then multicolour was not in fashion in art photography., The way Fontana shoots, dematerializes the objects photographed, which loose three-dimensionality and realism to become part of an abstract drawing”. Aside from the rural landscape Fontana has applied his graphic sensibility to other subjects: city architecture, portraiture, fashion, still-life and the nude. He was included in the exhibition of the Helmut Newton Collection along with Brassaï, Diane Arbus, Franco Fontana, Horst P. Horst, Irving Penn, June Newton, Just Loomis, Man Ray, Mark Arbeit...

'May Morning in Yellow' 60 x 40" Master Edition Limited edition (1 of 5) archival photograph, hand signed and numbered. Unframed _________________ Illumina...

Vetyver Pool, photograph from Richard Heeps India series, The Ambassador's Window. On a journey through India, a pilgrimage from Kerala in the South, to his Grandfather's birthplace ...

ABOUT THIS PIECE: Ludwig continues his exploration of his favorite city, Paris with a new series featuring stunning Parisian pools. These public and private spaces display the beauti...

ABOUT THIS ARTIST: Madeleine Gross is a Toronto-based artist who customizes her photographs with paint in a way designed to abstract landscapes but without completely abstracting rea...

HIROSHI SUGIMOTO (*1948, Japan) 310 Sea of Japan, Oki 1987 Gelatin silver print Sheet 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.) Edition of 25; Ed. no 15/25 For over 40 years, the Japanese artist...

Madison Square Garden (1953) Silver Gelatin Fibre Print - Oversized (Photo by H. Armstrong Roberts/Alamy) Madison Square Garden marquee night, west 49th street, Manhattan, New York, USA, circa 1953 Additional Information: Unframed Paper Size: 40x60'' Printed Later Silver Gelatin Fibre Print NOTE OTHER SIZES OF THIS IMAGE AVAILABLE 10 x 12'' 12 x 16'' 16 x 20'' 20 x 24'' 20 x 30'' 30 x 40'' 40 x 60'' FRAMING AVAILABLE ON REQUEST About the Artist: H. Armstrong ROBERTS (1883-1947) is an artist born in 1883 The oldest auction result ever registered on the website for an artwork by this artist is a photography sold in 2012. ACTORS ON SET, Bette Davis, Ladies Fashion...

Hand printed by artist. Signed in pencil on recto, signed and titled on verso. Stamped. Framed in silver archival mat and plexi.

Pete Kasprzak’s passion for city life is expressed in his dynamic urban artworks. Kasprzak’s artworks express energy and life with animated brush strokes. He adds dynamic movement an...

Brooklyn Bridge Tug Boat (1953) Silver Gelatin Fibre Print - Oversized (Photo by H. Armstrong Roberts) Downtown skyline manhattan seen through cables of Brooklyn Bridge tug boat i...

This is an exclusive limited edition black and white giclée print, on 100% cotton Hahnemühle Photo Rag Fine Art matte paper. This series of black and white photographs captures the ...

Pennsylvania Station NY (1910) Silver Gelatin Fibre Print - Oversized (Photo by Alamy) Main Waiting Room, Pennsylvania Station, New York City,...

Tree by the Calm Sea Panorama Study 1, Portugal - no. 21300 Prints are made to order in limited editions on Hahnemuehle Photo Rag Baryta. Each print is stamped on the back and signed...

Over 40 nude women assemble for a group portrait in the Holy Land Work looks impressive in person. Mint condition. Buyer pays for shipping Signature Signed...

This black-and-white photograph, taken in 1952 in Paris along the Seine River, captures a tranquil and picturesque moment. In the foreground, a man wearing a light-colored straw hat ...

ABOUT THIS ARTIST: Merve Türkan and Ulaş Kesebir, are a self taught photography duo based in London. They have been working professionally since 2014 and in the end of the 2020 they ...

'Yucca Skies' Edition 1/10, 20x30cm, 2017, Archival Pigment Print on Velvet Watercolor Paper, 310gsm, Bright White, Acid Free, Signature label and Certificate. Published in Tao Rusp...

Poolside Chez Holder Guests by the pool at Albin Holder’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, May 1970. 60 x 40" inches / 152 x 101 cm paper size Estate Stamped Collection Edition to 1...

Color fine art long exposure seascape - landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 8. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to order in limited...

Traelanipa, Slave Cliff Study 1, Faroe Islands - no. 21273 Pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 8. Printed on Hahnemuehle Photo Rag Baryta. Each print is stamped on the...

The blurring of time and space captured in time-lapse photography while the photographer is in motion has resulted in a lined pale beach, cerulean water and a darker sapphire sky str...

Limited Edition series of Classic a couple Porsche Targa within Palm Springs California. Mid Century Modern Design Architecture. Photography by Tom Blach...

Hand printed by the artist. Roman Loranc is no longer printing. Edition 2/40 Limited Edition Printed 2007 (vintage) Excellent condition Framed in walnut brown metal.

Slim Aarons Sea Drive, 1967 (printed later) C-Print Estate signature stamped and hand numbered edition of 150 with certificate of authenticity from the Slim Aarons estate Film produ...

Doorway in the Temple of Kalabshe, Nubia Original gold toned albumin photograph, c. 1862 Unsigned as is usual From: Upper Egypt and Ethiopia, c. 1862, Vol 1, (36 plates) Published by...

Ancient Views of Johor and Singapore is a set of 9 original vintage Albumen prints on a single cardboard 25 x 34 cm. Size of photos: 4 of 10.5x15.5 and other five on the rear. Goo...

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Autumn - 2001, 20x29cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid Slide. Signature label and Certificate. Not mounted. LIFE’S A DREAM (The Personal World of Stefanie Schneider) by Mark Gisbourne 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 (1997), John Dahl’s The Last Seduction (1994) or films like Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise with all its girl-power Bonny and Clyde-type clichés. But they serve no more than as a backdrop, a type of generic tableau from which Schneider might take human and abstracted elements, for as commercial films they are not the product of mere chance and random occurrence. Notwithstanding this observation, it is also clear that the gender deconstructions that the characters in these films so often portray, namely the active role of women possessed of a free and autonomous sexuality (even victim turned vamp), frequently find resonances within the behavioural events taking place in Schneider’s photographs and DVD sequences; the same sense of sexual autonomy that Stefanie Schneider possesses and is personally committed to. In the series 29 Palms (first begun in 1999) the two women characters Radha and Max act out a scenario that is both infantile and adolescent. Wearing brightly coloured fake wigs of yellow and orange, a parody of the blonde and the redhead, they are seemingly trailer park white trash possessing a sentimental and kitsch taste in clothes totally inappropriate to the locality. The fact that Schneider makes no judgment about this is an interesting adjunct. Indeed, the photographic projection of the images is such that the girls incline themselves to believe that they are both beautiful and desirous. However, unlike the predatory role of women in say Richard Prince’s photographs, which are simply a projection of a male fantasy onto women, Radha and Max are self-contained in their vacuous if empty trailer and motel world of the swimming pool, nail polish, and childish water pistols. Within the photographic sequence Schneider includes herself, and acts as a punctum of disruption. Why is she standing in front of an Officers’ Wives Club? Why is Schneider not similarly attired? Is there a proximity to an army camp, are these would-be Lolita(s) Rahda and Max wives or American marine groupies, and where is the centre and focus of their identity? It is the ambiguity of personal involvement that is set up by Schneider which deliberately makes problematic any clear sense of narrative construction. The strangely virulent colours of the bleached-out girls stand in marked contrast to Schneider’s own anodyne sense of self-image. Is she identifying with the contents or directing the scenario? With this series, perhaps, more than any other, Schneider creates a feeling of a world that has some degree of symbolic order. For example the girls stand or squat by a dirt road, posing the question as to their sexual and personal status. Following the 29 Palms series, Schneider will trust herself increasingly by diminishing the sense of a staged environment. The events to come will tell you both everything and nothing, reveal and obfuscate, point towards and simultaneously away from any clearly definable meaning. If for example we compare 29 Palms to say Hitchhiker (2005), and where the sexual contents are made overtly explicit, we do not find the same sense of simulated identity. It is the itinerant coming together of two characters Daisy and Austen, who meet on the road and subsequently share a trailer together. Presented in a sequential DVD and still format, we become party to a would-be relationship of sorts. No information is given as to the background or social origins, or even any reasons as to why these two women should be attracted to each other. Is it acted out? Are they real life experiences? They are women who are sexually free in expressing themselves. But while the initial engagement with the subject is orchestrated by Schneider, and the edited outcome determined by the artist, beyond that we have little information with which to construct a story. The events are commonplace, edgy and uncertain, but the viewer is left to decide as to what they might mean as a narrative. The disaggregated emotions of the work are made evident, the game or role playing, the transitory fantasies palpable, and yet at the same time everything is insubstantial and might fall apart at any moment. The characters relate but they do not present a relationship in any meaningful sense. Or, if they do, it is one driven the coincidental juxtaposition of random emotions. Should there be an intended syntax it is one that has been stripped of the power to grammatically structure what is being experienced. And, this seems to be the central point of the work, the emptying out not only of a particular American way of life, but the suggestion that the grounds upon which it was once predicated are no longer possible. The photo-novel Hitchhiker is porous and the culture of the seventies which it might be said to homage is no longer sustainable. Not without coincidence, perhaps, the decade that was the last ubiquitous age of Polaroid film. In the numerous photographic series, some twenty or so, that occur between 29 Palms and Hitchhiker, Schneider has immersed herself and scrutinised many aspects of suburban, peripheral, and scrubland America. Her characters, including herself, are never at the centre of cultural affairs. Such eccentricities as they might possess are all derived from what could be called their adjacent status to the dominant culture of America. In fact her works are often sated with references to the sentimental sub-strata that underpin so much of American daily life. It is the same whether it is flower gardens and household accoutrements of her photo-series Suburbia (2004), or the transitional and environmental conditions depicted in The Last Picture Show (2005). The artist’s use of sentimental song titles, often adapted to accompany individual images within a series by Schneider, show her awareness of America’s close relationship between popular film and music. For example the song ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’, becomes Leaving in a Jet Plane as part of The Last Picture Show series, while the literalism of the plane in the sky is shown in one element of this diptych, but juxtaposed to a blonde-wigged figure first seen in 29 Palms. This indicates that every potential narrative element is open to continual reallocation in what amounts to a story without end. And, the interchangeable nature of the images, like a dream, is the state of both a pictorial and affective flux that is the underlying theme pervading Schneider’s photo-narratives. For dream is a site of yearning or longing, either to be with or without, a human pursuit of a restless but uncertain alternative to our daily reality. The scenarios that Schneider sets up nonetheless have to be initiated by the artist. And, this might be best understood by looking at her three recent DVD sequenced photo-novels, Reneé’s Dream and Sidewinder (2005). We have already considered the other called Hitchhiker. In the case of Sidewinder the scenario was created by internet where she met J.D. Rudometkin, an ex-theologian, who agreed to her idea to live with her for five weeks in the scrubland dessert environment of Southern California. The dynamics and unfolding of their relationship, both sexually and emotionally, became the primary subject matter of this series of photographs. The relative isolation and their close proximity, the interactive tensions, conflicts and submissions, are thus recorded to reveal the day-to-day evolution of their relationship. That a time limit was set on this relation-based experiment was not the least important aspect of the project. The text and music accompanying the DVD were written by the American Rudometkin, who speaks poetically of “Torn Stevie. Scars from the weapon to her toes an accidental act of God her father said. On Vaness at California.” The mix of hip reverie and fantasy-based language of his text, echoes the chaotic unfolding of their daily life in this period, and is evident in the almost sun-bleached Polaroid images like Whisky Dance, where the two abandon themselves to the frenetic circumstances of the moment. Thus Sidewinder, a euphemism for both a missile and a rattlesnake, hints at the libidinal and emotional dangers that were risked by Schneider and Rudometkin. Perhaps, more than any other of her photo-novels it was the most spontaneous and immediate, since Schneider’s direct participation mitigated against and narrowed down the space between her life and the art work. The explicit and open character of their relationship at this time (though they have remained friends), opens up the question as the biographical role Schneider plays in all her work. She both makes and directs the work while simultaneously dwelling within the artistic processes as they unfold. Hence she is both author and character, conceiving the frame within which things will take place, and yet subject to the same unpredictable outcomes that emerge in the process. In Reneé’s Dream, issues of role reversal take place as the cowgirl on her horse undermines the male stereotype of Richard Prince’s ‘Marlboro Country’. This photo-work along with several others by Schneider, continue to undermine the focus of the male gaze, for her women are increasingly autonomous and subversive. They challenge the male role of sexual predator, often taking the lead and undermining masculine role play, trading on male fears that their desires can be so easily attained. That she does this by working through archetypal male conventions of American culture, is not the least of the accomplishments in her work. What we are confronted with frequently is of an idyll turned sour, the filmic clichés that Hollywood and American television dramas have promoted for fifty years. The citing of this in the Romantic West, where so many of the male clichés were generated, only adds to the diminishing sense of substance once attributed to these iconic American fabrications. And, that she is able to do this through photographic images rather than film, undercuts the dominance espoused by time-based film. Film feigns to be seamless though we know it is not. Film operates with a story board and setting in which scenes are elaborately arranged and pre-planned. Schneider has thus been able to generate a genre of fragmentary events, the assemblage of a story without a storyboard. But these post-narratological stories require another component, and that component is the viewer who must bring their own interpretation as to what is taking place. If this can be considered the upside of her work, the downside is that she never positions herself by giving a personal opinion as to the events that are taking place in her photographs. But, perhaps, this is nothing more than her use of the operation of chance dictates. I began this essay by speaking about the apparitional contents of Stefanie Schneider’s pictorial narratives, and meant at that time the literal and chance-directed ‘appearing’ qualities of her photographs. Perhaps, at this moment we should also think of the metaphoric contents of the word apparition. There is certainly a spectre-like quality also, a ghostly uncertainty about many of the human experiences found in her subject matter. Is it that the subculture of the American Dream, or the way of life Schneider has chosen to record, has in turn become also the phantom of it former self? Are these empty and fragmented scenarios a mirror of what has become of contemporary America? There is certainly some affection for their contents on the part of the artist, but it is somehow tainted with pessimism and the impossibility of sustainable human relations, with the dissolute and commercial distractions of America today. Whether this is the way it is, or, at least, the way it is perceived by Schneider is hard to assess. There is a bleak lassitude about so many of her characters. But then again the artist has so inured herself into this context over a long protracted period that the boundaries between the events and happenings photographed, and the personal life of Stefanie Schneider, have become similarly opaque. Is it the diagnosis of a condition, or just a recording of a phenomenon? Only the viewer can decide this question. For the status of Schneider’s certain sense of uncertainty is, perhaps, the only truth we may ever know.

1 Kerry Brougher (ed.), Art and Film Since 1945: Hall of Mirrors, ex. cat., The Museum of Contemporary Art (New York, 1996) 2 Im Reich der Phantome: Fotographie des Unsichtbaren, ex. cat., Städtisches Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach/Kunsthalle Krems/FotomuseumWinterthur, (Ostfildern-Ruit, 1997) 3 Photoworks: When Pictures Vanish – Sigmar Polke, Museum of Contemporary Art (Zürich-Berlin-New York, 1995) 4 Slavoj Žižek, The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch’s Lost Highway, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, Seattle, Occasional Papers, no. 1, 2000. 5 Diane Arbus, eds. Doon Arbus, and Marvin Israel...