Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 5

Stefanie Schneider
The Getaway (Till Death do us Part) - Contemporary, Polaroid

2005

$600
£451.04
€522.90
CA$837.69
A$938.26
CHF 488.21
MX$11,395.11
NOK 6,189.24
SEK 5,840.01
DKK 3,901.58
Shipping
Retrieving quote...
The 1stDibs Promise:
Authenticity Guarantee,
Money-Back Guarantee,
24-Hour Cancellation

About the Item

The Getaway (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 40x40cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #9167. Not mounted. A Star is Born written by Ioana Velaneau Published in EXBERLINER The buzz that photographer Stefanie Schneider is enjoying right now will soon reverberate beyond the circle of interested parties: collectors, critics, gallery owners, friends and rivals. Soon, prices for her works will skyrocket and her name will be on the tongues of art-lovers in the know. 
Whoever is interested in photography must take notice: Schneider is a star to be. 
 The Cuxhaven-born (Lower Saxony) 36-year-old was brought up on Super-8 films shot by her mother - she says she was born with a camera. Two decades and a MFA from the Folkwang Schule in Essen later, Schneider held her first solo exhibition in LA. Today, after numerous solo and group shows in the US, France, and Germany, she lives and works in between Berlin and LA. The two cities don't have the same status in her life’s work. While Berlin-Friedrichshain - where she got "sort of stuck"- has accommodated her post-production headquarters for the last three years, LA is her true love. As chance and a filmmaker boyfriend took her there seven years ago, she recalls: "As soon as I got off the plane I loved it. For the first time I could breathe and I felt free. LA is my city."
 And what better place than the heart of the movie industry is there to feed the intensity of her dreamlike world. Schneider photographs with a sense of urgency, with a frenzy which fits to the Hollywood dream-factory. The care she puts into the staging of her photos, as well as the strong narratives implied in her work often conceived in series result in the construction of a fictionalized reality reminiscent of films. Her pictures unfold as if they were sequences taken from a photo-novella world, escaping the single moments associated with photography. "If I place my bet on the present", Pascal wrote, "I stand to gain nothing - no more than what amounts to a fleeting instant." Schneider bets on that present, on that fleeting instant. The driving force behind her work seems to be this dream state, which leads her to try to make sense of the world's illusions through pictures, often of herself and her friends. Using long expired Polaroid film, which gives her photos (stained with chemicals) a prematurely aged, unreal look, she transforms landscapes, still-lives and the non-events of daily life - sleeping, driving a car, being bored - into poetic observations. 

 The images from LAST PICTURE SHOW come across as miniatures of reality, while shifting our visual and aesthetic experiences. They require a few moments to let their meaning set in. An image of a cemetery could easily be mistaken, at first sight, with an image of clouds drifting through the sky on a beautiful breezy summer day. 

 With HITCHHIKER, a three-minute video, Schneider takes a step further towards film narration. The work contemplates the burning attraction between two women, the pleasures and unreal easiness of the impromptu encounter, and seems to suggest no possible life beyond it. The soundtrack (a compilation of mostly her friends' music) envelops the audience and heightens the feeling of voluptuous tension and fragility. 
 In Schneider's work, real life and the artist's fantasy-world often interplay, in a fashion reminiscent of Sophie Calle's playful (and manipulative) use of her own life and privacy to create a life/fiction that sparks her art. The series SIDEWINDER, for example, was triggered by a failed love affair. As an antidote, the artist fictionalizes, i.e. takes off to the desert with a perfect stranger she met over the Internet: JD Rudometkin. The result? An album of tender and voyeuristic intimate moments of the two, offered up for us to share. But what appears as sequences of seemingly unguarded private moments, are, in reality, carefully constructed scenes - scripted by Jd him- self. Schneider is one of those artists for whom art is a means of survival, creation a hypnotic antidote to the spleen of life. The woman's very personality subdued at first, then, restless, whimsical and recklessly imaginative - makes you wonder what she would have become without the vital outlet of her photography.

More From This Seller

View All
Conception (Till Death do us Part) - Contemporary, Polaroid
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Conception (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 40x40cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #9157. Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider's photographs evoke scintillating moments suspended between daydreams and waking reality. Each scene, captured in the southwestern United States, radiates a surreal enchantment. The artist's role appears minimal yet pivotal, providing the decisive impulse that sets the imagery into motion. The figures in her photographs remain as elusive as the motivations behind their actions, and the narratives woven through her sequences are tantalizingly open to interpretation. Atmospheric disturbances in Schneider's work emerge as the result of a deliberate narrative arrangement, compelling viewers to navigate between visual mementos and the gaps in memory they conjure. Yet, her artistry is no less purposeful in its engagement with medium. Despite the inherent unpredictability of expired Polaroid film, Schneider wields it with calculated intent. The photo-chemical self-developing process, altered by age and decay, transforms the initial exposure into something alien yet mesmerizing. This dysfunction is a cornerstone of MIND SCREEN, a multi-part work that explores the fragility of reality, authenticity, and comprehension. Schneider juxtaposes this brittleness with a magical realism steeped in chimeras, crafting dreamlike sequences that resist definitive narratives. She entrusts viewers with the responsibility of piecing together presumed storylines, refusing to offer a manual for interpretation. Instead, her work draws us into a realm where the unreal reigns—shimmering scenes that evoke the mirage of a road movie, a moment of violence, or a tragic self-sacrifice. Film genres are invoked and subverted in a single breath: Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders is reimagined through a rose-tinted lens, Thelma...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Chariot (Till Death do us Part) - Contemporary, Polaroid
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Chariot (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 40x40cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist In...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Leaving Town (Sidewinder) - based on the Polaroid
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Leaving Town (Sidewinder) - 2005 80x80cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 3...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

On the Road (Last Picture Show) - Polaroid, Contemporary, Color
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
On the Road (The Last Picture Show) - 2005, 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artis...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Metal

The End (Sidewinder) - based on a Polaroid
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
The End (Sidewinder) - 2005 80x80cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 3447. ...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Wonder Valley (Till Death Do Us Part) - Contemporary, Polaroid
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Wonder Valley (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Art...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

You May Also Like

Miquel Arnal Set of Polaroid Photographs
By Miquel Arnal
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Set of Polaroid photographs by Miquel Arnal. In original condition, with minor wear consistent with age and use, preserving a beautiful patina. Material: Photographic paper ...
Category

1990s Spanish Post-Modern Photography

Materials

Paper

Miquel Arnal Set of Polaroid Photographs
$547 Sale Price / set
40% Off
Expired_14_2020 - Photograph by Serena Zeppilli
Located in Roma, IT
This photograph Expired_14_2020 was taken by the Italian photographer Serena Zeppilli. It is part of the series "I was looking for something that I...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Miquel Arnal Set of Polaroid Photographs
By Miquel Arnal
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Set of Polaroid photographs by Miquel Arnal. In original condition, with minor wear consistent with age and use, preserving a beautiful patina. Material: Photographic paper ...
Category

1990s Spanish Post-Modern Photography

Materials

Paper

Miquel Arnal Set of Polaroid Photographs
$492 Sale Price / set
40% Off
Miquel Arnal Set of Polaroid Photographs
By Miquel Arnal
Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
Set of Polaroid photographs by Miquel Arnal. In original condition, with minor wear consistent with age and use, preserving a beautiful patina. Material: Photographic paper ...
Category

1990s Spanish Post-Modern Photography

Materials

Paper

Miquel Arnal Set of Polaroid Photographs
$1,113 Sale Price / set
40% Off
The Road - Vintage Photograph - 1960s
Located in Roma, IT
The Road- Vintage Photograph is a black and white photograph realized in the 1960s. Good conditions.
Category

1960s Contemporary Figurative Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

American Photograph by Sean Lotman, "Going My Way? (Death Valley, CA)", 2008
Located in New York, NY
"A native of Los Angeles, California, Sean Lotman (b. California) grew up frequenting the movie theaters of southern California, dazzled by their stories, sets, and vivid colors. Ini...
Category

Early 2000s Landscape Photography

Materials

C Print