C Print Landscape Photography

A piece of art from the movie 'Stay' by Stefanie Schneider Stefanie created the art for both main actors Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling in the movie 'Stay' directed by Marc Forster. She also created the art for several dream sequences and the end credit sequence for the movie. Forgive Me (Stay) - 2006 128x125cm, Edition 4/5, analog C-Print, printed by the artist on Fuji Archive Crystal Paper. Based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 2469.04. Not mounted. Additional photos from the solo exhibition 'Stranger than Paradise' Robert Drees Gallery, Hannover ------------------------------------------------ “I never remember the details of a Stefanie Schneider image, just the whole. She treads a third path between reality and dream that connects the two and truly sparks my artistic, visual freedom.” (Marc Forster) Stay expands a traditional connection through new facets Interwoven between the media of photography and film...

Radha Mind Screen (29 Palms, CA), triptych - 1999 78 x 77cm each, installed with gaps 78x260cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. 3 Archival C-Prints, based on 3 Polaroids. Si...

'Desert Sands' (California Badlands), 2016, 20x24cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid Certificate and Signature label artist Inventory No. 19326.13 Not moun...

Untitled Sequence (Stranger than Paradise), 2005 30x38cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. artist Inventory No. 842. No...

Four Corners Junction (The Last Picture Show) - 5 pieces, - 2005 Edition of 5, 38x36cm each, (5 pieces) installed with gaps 38x210cm, 5 analog C-Prints, hand-printed and by the ar...

Palm Tree Restaurant (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 20x20cm. Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Arti...

Malina (Stranger than Paradise) - 1997 43x59cm, Edition of 1/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artist Invento...

Ocean Blue (Stranger than Paradise) - 1997 48x58cm, Edition of 5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid, not mounted si...

Olancha (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999, (6 pieces) 38x36cm each, 80x120cm installed with gaps, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, 6 archival C-Prints, based on the 6 Polaroids. ...

Amboy Salt Flats (California Badlands) - 2010 20x24cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 10937. Not mou...

Magic Mountain II (Memories of Green) - 2003 Edition of 10, 58x56cm. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on an expired Polaroid. Signa...

'Men at Work' (California Badlands) - 2016 20x24cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label, artist Inventor...

'Breakdown' - 2013, 60x75cm Edition of 5, analog C-Print, hand-printed and enlarged by the artist and based on the Polaroid Certificate and Signature label artist Inventory No. 1...

Horizon (Zuma Beach) - Malibu - 2004 38 x 37 cm, Edition of 5, Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, printed on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid. Artist in...

Gasoline (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 6 pieces 128x126cm each, 263x390cm installed with gaps, sold out Edition of 5, Artist Proof 1/2, 6 analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the ar...

Dreaming of Buffalo (29 Palms, CA) - 2009 37x47cm Edition of 5, Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid Mounted on Aluminum with matte UV-Protection. Cer...

Mammoth - Jardin du Plantes (Paris) - 1995 - Edition of 5, 50x60cm including white borders. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist and based on the Polaroid, Signature labe...

The Edge of Suburbia (Suburbia) - 2004 20x24cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid, not mounted. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 422.01....

'Untitled' (Oilfields) 2004, 128x125cm, Edition 3/3. Analog C-Print (Vintage Print), hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label, not mounted...

"Treasure" (Stage of Consciousness) 2013, 102x125cm, Artist Proof 3/3, sold out edition of 150 Lambda Print, based on the Polaroid, mounted on Aluminum with matte UV-Protection a...

Springtime (Paris) - 1995 Edition of 5, 50x60cm including white borders. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist and based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate....

Wonder Valley (29 Palms, CA) - 2008 125x154cm, Edition of 5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid, artist inventory nu...

Burning Field (Stranger than Paradise) - 2004, 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Artist Inventory # 779.20. Mounted on Aluminum with matte UV-Pro...

Untitled (Paradise) - 1999, 20x20cm. Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 20452. 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, that 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 have 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...

'Salton Baptistes' (California Badlands) - 2010 50x60cm, Edition of 5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the Artist, based on the Polaroid. Mounted on 3mm Aluminum with matte UV-Pro...

Stefanie Schneider's work was used for Marc Forster's movie 'Stay'. Featuring Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling. Naomi and Ryan were both portraying artists and Stefanie's art was the art both created during the movie. Stefanie's images were also used for Ryan Gosling's memory sequence, for the end titles, for edits in between and as art paintings hanging in several scenes within the movie. “I never remember the details of a Stefanie Schneider image, just the whole. She treads a third path between reality and dream that connects the two and truly sparks my artistic, visual freedom.” (Marc Forster) This piece: Brooklyn Bridge (Stay) - 2006 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory # 2172. Not mounted. 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...

"4 Corners II" (Last Picture Show) - 2005 58x57cm, Edition of 5 Analog C-Print, hand-printed and enlarged by the artist on Archive Fuji Chrystal Paper, based on the Polaroid, moun...

'Moonwalk' (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 80x80cm, Edition of 5 Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid Certificate and signature label artist Inventory Number 7537.01 Not mounted. ...

Planes (Stranger than Paradise) - 2001 57x56cm each plus 5 cm in between each print, installed 122x183cm, Edition of 10, 6 analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Cry...

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Happy - 2001 20x29cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid Slide. Signature label and Certifi...

Summertime (Malibu) - 2004 Edition 4/5, 39x37cm. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 660.04. Mounted on Aluminum with matt...

Planes I - 2008 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory #4656. Not mounted. A...

Max and Radha sitting on Rock (Long Way Home) - 1999 featuring Radha Mitchell 38x37cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Certificate an...

'Long Way Home II' by Stefanie Schneider (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 20x20cm, sold out Edition of 10, Artist Proof 2/2.(the last of the last in this edition) Archival C-Print ...

The Urge to Disappear (Stranger than Paradise) - 1997 59x43cm, Edition 3/10. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. A...

Gas station at Night I (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 38x36cm, Edition of 30, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory # 390, ...

Miss America (Sidewinder) - 2005 39x38cm, Edition of 5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, based on the Polaroid, Certificate and Signatur...

Skylark (Stranger than Paradise) - 1997 43x59cm, Edition 5/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature La...

Snow Flakes (Californication) - 2021 20x24cm. Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory Numb...

Blue Cadillac (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 20x24cm, Edition of 10 Archival C-Print print, based on the Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label. artist Inventory #607. Not mounted. ...

Riviera (Malibu) - 2004 Edition 4/5, 39x37cm. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 668.04. Mounted on Aluminum with matte U...

Highway One (Zuma Beach) - 1997 43x59cm, Edition of 4/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificat...

Venice from the Sea (Stranger than Paradise) - 1998 43x59cm, Edition of 5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artis...

Hand in the Sky (Malibu) - 2004 Edition 4/5, 39x37cm. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 664.04. Mounted on Aluminum with...

By the Sea (Zuma Beach) - 1997 43x59cm, Edition of 3/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artist Inventory # 119.03...

Train tracks (The last Picture Show) - 2004 58x57cm. Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs. analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Ce...

Couples (Stranger than Paradise) - 1997 43x59cm, Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the...

Venice II (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 43x59cm, Edition of 3/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artist Invent...

Childhood Memories (Paris) - 1995 Edition of 5, 50x60cm including white borders. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist and based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certif...

Trains (Stranger than Paradise) - 1997 43x59cm, Edition 5/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Not mounted. 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...

The Big Blue (Californication) - 2019 78x77cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature ...

Renée's Dream (29 Palms, CA) - 2005 114 x 67cm (including white frame) Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the 32 Polaroids. Artist inventory 8072. Signature Label and cer...

Skylark (Stranger than Paradise) - 1997 43x59cm, Edition 3/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artist Inventory...

A Vision you can't capture (29 Palms, CA) - 2007 38 x 50 cm, Edition of 30. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 41...

Palm Springs Palm Trees IX (Californication) - 2019 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory Number 22...

Gas Station at Night I (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 37x36cm, Edition of 30, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #391. Not...

Bois de Bologne (Paris) (Paris) - 1995 - Edition of 5, 50x60cm including white borders. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist and based on t...

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Walking Lulu II - 2001, 20x30cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid Slide. Certificate and ...