Late 20th Century Landscape Photography

Chromogenic print, front-mounted to acrylic, flush-mounted to aluminum, as issued. Photograph Size: 17 x 24 inches. Inscription: Hand signed and numbered 1/11, verso, as issued. Note...

Eden Rock The mansion of Remy de Haenen on a peninsula in the bay of St. Jean at Eden Rock on the Caribbean island of St Barts (Saint-Barthelemy), March 197...

'Unghia Marina' A group of people stand on a terrace, at the Unghia Marina on the island of Capri, Italy, in September 1989. Trees dot the side of the marina while a flagpole rises...

Eden-Roc Pool 1976 Slim Aarons Limited Estate Edition Guests round the swimming pool at the Hotel du Cap Eden-Roc, Antibes, France, August 1976. 72" x 48" paper size Photo by Sli...

This late 1970s landscape photograph, captured by society photographer Slim Aarons, features spectators dining in the open air as the horses go by at Baden Baden racecourse, Germany....

'Positano Beach' Elevated view looking down on sunbathers and parasols on the beach at La Scogliera beach in Positano, Italy, 1979. 40 x 30" inches / 101 x 76 cm paper size Es...

Running with Guns (Long Way Home) - 1999, 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid. Signed on back with certificate. Artist I...

OK Corral - part 2 - (Stranger than Paradise), - 1999, 20x20 cm, Edition 5/10, digital C-Print based on the Polaroid, Artist Inventory 318_2.18, Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider's scintillating situations take place in the American West. Situated on the verge of an elusive super-reality, her photographic sequences provide the ambience for loosely woven story lines and a cast of phantasmic characters. Schneider works with the chemical mutations of expired Polaroid film stock. Chemical explosions of color spreading across the surfaces undermine the photograph's commitment to reality and induce her characters into trance-like dream scapes. Like flickering sequences of old road movies Schneider's images seem to evaporate before conclusions can be made - their ephemeral reality manifesting in subtle gestures and mysterious motives. Schneider's images refuse to succumb to reality, they keep alive the confusions of dream, desire, fact, and fiction. 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”) Exhibitions Selected (selected) 2018 Participation Bombay Beach Biennale, Bombay Beach, USA (G) March Available to All, Rough Play Projects - Site Specific, Joshou Tree, USA (G) curated by Deborah Martin with Adam Berg, Doron Gazit, Kellan Barnebey, Chris Sanchez, Aili Schmelzt 2017 BLICKFELD Analoge Fotografie, Kommunale Galerie Steglitz-Zehlendorf (G) (catalog), (upcoming)
 Rosegallery, Bergamot Station, Santa Monica (G) Magie des Moments, Kunstverein Bad Homburg Artlantis, Bad Homburg (G) 2016 
Instantdreams, Instantdreams Gallery, Berlin 

(S) 2015
 Desert Voices, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) with Pamela Littky The Ballery in Heat, The Ballery, Berlin (G) 
Blue Nudes, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) 

 2014

 Summer Show, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (G) 6 Finalists, Saatchi Gallery London (G) 
Instantdreams, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (S)
Grand Opening, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) with Banksy, Andy Warhol, Alison Bignon, Sophie Dickens, Victor Gingembre and others
 2013 
Heather's Dream, Short, nominated for the German Short Film Award 2013 (Deutscher Kurzfilmpreis)
Images For Images (Artists fir Tichy), GASK - Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region,  Kutná Hora, Czech Republic, (G) with Richard Prince, Nan Golding, Shirana Shahbazi, Sophie Calle, Martin Kippenberger, Arnulf Rainer, Thomas Ruff, Katharina Grosse, Jonathan Meese & others (catalog) 
The Girl behind the White Picket Fence, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (S)
 Heather's Dream, Short, German Competition Short Film Festival Oberhausen 
Multimedia Presentation with Artist Stefanie Schneider, Palms Springs Art Museum, Annenberg Theater
 The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, (G) with Ansel Adams, Bruce Charlesworth...

"Baia delle Zagare, 1970" is a beautiful offset realized by Franco Fontana. Rondanini Galleria D'arte Contemporanea - Roma. Coloured poster from a photograph by Franco Fontana (Mod...

This mid-1970s landscape photograph, captured by society photographer Slim Aarons, features friends boarding a riva boat in Monte Carlo, Monaco, This is an estate stamped and hand n...

Gasoline II (Stranger than Paradise) 1999 - 3 pieces, each 50x50cm, installed 50x170cm including gaps. sold out Edition of 150, Artist Proof 4/5. Archival C-Prints, based on 3 Po...

Guests by the pool at the Hotel du Cap Eden-Roc, Antibes, France, August 1976. Hotel du Cap Eden-Roc 1976 C-Print Estate signature stamped and hand numbered edition of 150 with cert...

San Francisco is a vintage offset poster realized after a photograph by Franco Fontana in 1979. The print is by Galleria d'arte contemporanea Rondanini, at Rome. Good condition. F...

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...

Coloured poster after a photograph by Franco Fontana (Modena, 1933), one of the italian most famous contemporary photographers. Titled at the bottom. Very good conditions. Fontana s...

Giacomo Montegazza Giacomo and Stefania Montegazza welcome guests arriving by boat at their villa, La Casinella, on Lake Como, 1983. 30x40” / 76x101 cm - paper size Estate Stampe...

Lisa Klausner (American, 1955-) 1983 "Collins Avenue" Signed bottom right Frame: 28" X 32" Image: 14" X 18.5" This is printed on paper in pastel deco colors and appears to be a photo based color print. It might be hand tinted. She had a show "Lisa Klausner — “Seaside Oddities,' painted photographs at Barbara Gillman Gallery. She was one of Miami Beach’s first gallery owners, the woman who brought Andy Warhol to South Beach and brought Art Basel to Miami Beach. She was involved in artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapping Biscayne Bay islands in hot pink. She loaned art for “Miami Vice.” She dealt with some of the world’s most important contemporary artists, including but not limited to, James Rosenquist, Herman Leonard and Nam June Paik. Lisa Klausner born in Northeast Ohio, Shaker heights. After college, she lived in South Florida and then New York City, where she worked as a photographer. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and is in the permanent collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum. This is from the Miami Vice period when she lived and worked in Miami Beach, South Beach Art Deco district. “It was a desert,” said Lisa Klausner, 31, a photographer who was one of the first of the deco converts to move to Ocean Drive in 1981. She lived in the Cardozo...

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

Discover the quintessence of French Riviera charm in Slim Aarons' iconic photograph, 'Saint-Tropez Boucherie,' on Rue des Commercants, Saint-Tropez, 1971. This image is a beautiful intersection of fashion, culture, and everyday life in the sun-drenched streets of Saint-Tropez in August 1971. This photograph features a casual yet captivating scene: two women and a young girl, all dressed in vibrant, vintage early '70s attire in shades of mint green, lemon yellow, and pink, enjoying a leisurely conversation outside a classic red French boucherie or butcher shop. A chic gold and white bicycle, representative of the laid-back Mediterranean lifestyle, is parked unassumingly on the sidewalk. Adding depth to the scene, the shop's proprietor, clad in a purple shirt, can be spotted through the window, lending an authentic touch to the photograph. An enchanting Moroccan-style zellige tile...

Slim Aarons Estate Print - Hotel Du Cap Eden Roc Size 72x48" inches / 183 x 122 cm Guests by the pool at the Hotel du Cap Eden-Roc, Antibes, France, August 1976. (Photo by Slim Aa...

The beauty of nature's rhythm is captured in this black and white landscape photograph of a forest of Aspen trees by American photographer and film maker, John Henry Johnson (America...

Experience the allure of the Mediterranean with this iconic Slim Aarons genuine Estate Edition photograph, capturing topless swimmers on a rocky promontory of the pristine island of ...

"I like to go back to a place. Seasons change. Light, which is theater, changes. Nature is tumultuous, and our contact with it makes life happen.” - David H. Gibson David H. Gibso...

The image, Aspen, Quiet Light, was made just after the conclusion of an intense week-long photography workshop. I went to one of my favorite aspen groves fully intending not to make ...

Cabazon Dinosaurs (Drive to the Desert) - 2000 44x59cm, Edition 5/5. Analog C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #155.05. Not mount...

Beautiful black & white landscape photograph of forest trees and stream in the woods of Alaska, by Anchorage-based nature photographer George Provost (American, 20th Century). Hand signed and dated "George Provost 1989" lower right. Photograph is hand made from an 8x10 camera negative in a traditional "wet" darkroom, by the photographer. Mounted on white mat board. Unframed. Image size: 19"H x 15"W. Born in California, Provost grew up in the Bay Area. He has lived and worked in Alaska since 1987, specializing in large format, fine art, black and white photography. His work has been exhibited in over 60 exhibitions, received numerous awards, and is included in hundreds of collections, both public and private. George Provost was an Isle Royale...

'Poolside Drinks' May 1975: Guests around the pool at Dorothy Laughlin's Santa Barbara home. 40 x 30" inches / 101 x 76 cm paper size Estate Stamped Collection Edition to 150 ...

Palm Springs E-Type (Californication) - 2021 50x50cm. Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inven...

NASA Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard stands by the US flag on the moon with the shadow of Edgar D. Mitchell, module pilot, taking the picture. This is an 8" x 10" vintage chromoge...

Robert Landau's urban landscape: Sunset Strip with Three Billboards; featuring Eddie Money, Cher, and Judy Collins and an unforgettable view of Sunset Bo...

Slim Aarons Poolside Pairs (Kaufmann Desert House) 1970 (printed later) C Print Estate stamped and numbered edition of 150 with certificate of authenticity Former fashion model Hel...

Dining Al Fresco in Capri 1980 (printed later) C print Estate stamped and numbered edition of 150 with Certificate of authenticity Caption: Italian artist and actress Domiziana Gio...

Italian artist and actress Domiziana Giordano, Italian author Francesca Sanvitale (1928 - 2011), Dino Trappetti and Umberto Terrelli dining al fresco on a terrace overlooking the wat...

Antony Zega (1962-2019). Motel (Night), ca. 1985. Photographic print, 10 x 10 inches. Mounted to acid free matting board measuring 16 x 20 inches. Unsigned. Estate stamp on verso.

Slim Aarons' Saint-Tropez Beach, an Estate Edition photograph, is a vintage scene of sunbathers on the French Riviera, August 1971. Colorful coral red and mint green umbrellas shelte...

Village Motel Sunset (Stranger than Paradise) - 2005 20x20cm, sold out Edition of 5, Artist Proof 2/2 (the very last from this edition), Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid, ...

This is a vintage Ted Spiegel photo of a Benedictine Nun, Mount of Olives, Jerusalem. Hand signed and editioned A/P. This is for one Photograph from the portfolio entitled "Jerusalem: City of Mankind," The mounting is 14 X 17 inches. the actual photo measurement is between 9.25 X 14 to 10.5 X 13.5 inches (22.9 X 35.6 to 26.7 X 34.3 cm.) This is hand signed and editioned in pencil, on print mount recto; and stamped on the reverse with photographers name and copyright info. In a folding jacket with a printed credit and title. The red title sheet is just here for provenance and reference and is not included in this sale. The first copy was awarded to the President of the United States, the second to the President of the State of Israel, the third to the Mayor of Jerusalem and the fourth to the Baron Edmond de Rothschild. Rare Cornell Capa and Baron Edmond De Rothschild “Jerusalem: City Of Mankind” Photo Album 1973. It has been produced by the international fund for concerned photography, INC, New York for the women’s division of the American Friends of the Israel Museum, New York. 15 copied were reserved for participating photographers. Color prints are made by dye transfer process from original transparencies and black and white enlargements are made from original negatives under the photographers supervision. Design and production – Arnold Skolnick / Bhupendra Karia. Color prints by Berkey K & L Custom Services INC, New York. Black and white prints by Igor Bakht Werner Braun – Moonrise over the Knesset Robert Burroughs – At the Western Wall. Cornell Capa – View from the Israel Museum sculpture garden. Leonard Freed – Reading from Sephardic Torah scrolls. Ernst Haas – In the Arab quarter, Old City. Charles Harbutt – Easter, Holy fire. Ron Havilio – Wallscape. Bhupendra Karia – Midday prayers, Al Aqsa grounds. Marc Riboud – Ecumenical landscape Billy rose garden, Israel museum. Ted Spiegel – Benedictine nun, Mount of Olives. Micha Bar-Am – Via Dolorosa on Friday. An accomplished photojournalist with more than 50 years of experience, Ted Spiegel has covered assignments across the globe, but like the 19th-century artists of the famed Hudson River School, he's made the Hudson River Valley the focus of much of his life's work. Spiegel's love of the landscape and positive attitude infuse all his images. His January 1978 assignment for National Geographic magazine was a color photo essay on the Hudson River Valley. He has produced 15 other photo essays for National Geographic magazine on a variety of subjects, and has also produced several picture books on such topics as the Hudson River Valley, Saratoga and West Point. He also did a celebrated series of photos of John F Kennedy one of which was selected for the JFK USA postal stamp. Speigel’s biography on the National Geographic website espouses his zest for his home: “He’s covered assignments across the globe, but like the 19th-century artists of the famed Hudson River School, he’s made the Hudson River Valley the focus of much of his life’s work.” It also notes that he uses photography as a medium to encourage appreciation and respect for the environment’s beauty: “Spiegel’s love of the landscape and positive attitude infuse all his images, [and he] sees his landscape photography as a way to make people aware of the beauty in nature and a way to, in turn, encourage people to help protect and save the environment.” Photographers, like seeds in a rich environment, take root, grow and prosper. For Ansel Adams, the place was the West Coast -- Carmel, Calif., and Yosemite National Park. For Ted Spiegel, it is the Hudson River Valley -- Bear Mountain...

Palm Springs Palm Trees (Californication) - 2023 50x49cm. Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist I...

Buried (Stranger than Paradise) - 2003 Edition of 5 plus 2 Artist Proofs. 38x36cm each, 90x175cm installed. 8 Analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive P...

El Venero 1971 (printed later) Chromogenic Lambda print Printed Later Estate stamped and hand numbered edition of 150 with certificate of authenticity from the estate. El Venero, th...

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...

Reportage from Albania - Tirana  is a vintage photograph realized in the Late 1970s. Good conditions.

Outback Dreams - 29 Palms, CA - 2010 50x130cm. Archival C-Print, based on the 3 original Polaroids. Signature label and certificate. Artist Inventory # 1933. Not mounted. THE G...

Desert House Party A poolside party at a desert house, designed by Richard Neutra for Edgar J. Kaufmann, in Palm Springs, January 1970. Featured in the group are: industrial designe...

Hotel du Cap Eden-Roc 1976 Guests by the pool at the Hotel du Cap Eden-Roc, Antibes, France, August 1976. 40 x 30" inches / 101 x 76 cm paper size. Photo by Slim Aarons Archival ...

Saint-Tropez Boucherie A boucherie or butcher’s shop on Rue des Commercants in Saint-Tropez, on the French Riviera, August 1971. Paper size 30 x 40" inches / 76 x 101 cm Estate ...

Megachess A giant game of chess in Saint Lucia, in the Lesser Antilles, February 1993. Paper size 30 x 40" inches / 76 x 101 cm Estate Stamped Collection Edition to 150 Photo b...

Subway 43 by John Conn was originally photographed in New York City between 1975 and 1982. Each black and white photograph is signed and numbered. Edition of 15. It is a 20x30 ima...

Dani Geneux (left) and Marie-Eugenie Gaudfrin sunbathing at the Hotel du Cap Eden-Roc, Antibes, France, August 1976. Aarons' iconic photograph depicts the legendary hotel made famous by Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, the sun-kissed home away from home for titans of literature and music (Cole Porter, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Stefan Zweig, Noël Coward), film (Marlene Dietrich, Alain Delon, Elizabeth Taylor, who brought all of her husbands there, and every Hollywood A-lister in town for Cannes), art (Chagall, Picasso, Matisse), music (John and Yoko, Jane and Serge, Ella Fitzgerald), politics (Churchill, De Gaulle, the Kennedys), and high society (the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson). Two female bathers in black sunhats enjoy a holiday in bikini and topless styles, against the rocks. Numbered and stamped by the Slim Aarons...

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...

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