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Contemporary Landscape Photography

CONTEMPORARY STYLE

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.

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The Farm, Snjór series by Christophe Jacrot - Winter photography, Iceland
Located in Paris, FR
The Farm (La ferme) by contemporary photographer Christophe Jacrot. Fine Art print on Etching Hahnemühle paper. Prints available in two sizes: 70 x 105 cm : edition of 12 80 x 120 c...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

C Print

Wonder Valley (Till Death Do Us Part) - Contemporary, Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
29 Palms (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. Artist I...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Poetic Passages (Stranger than Paradise)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Poetic Passages (Stranger than Paradise) - 2008 40x40cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist In...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Wonder Valley (Till Death Do Us Part) - Contemporary, Polaroid
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 Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Touchdown (Stranger than Paradise)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Touchdown - 2008 40x40cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory #4667. Not mounted. ...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Californian Coast, Pacific Ocean photography unframed No. 2
Located in Los Angeles, CA
We present another series of new work highlighting the raw, natural beauty of Californian landscapes and nature, from various California based photographers. May be paired with oth...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

C Print

Yucatan sunshine
Located in PARIS, FR
La profondeur d'un coucher de soleil avec en premier plan une baraque de pêcheurs. Photographie prise par Bellec lors d'un séjour au Yucatan, Mexico.
Category

1980s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Digital, Lambda

"Saint Jean de Luz" by Didier Fournet, 51 x 51 in, 2023
Located in Paris, France
Didier Fournet is a contemporary "painter" thanks to photography: he chose pixels instead of brushes and reveals the beauty of the world by turning landscapes into vibrations. Self-...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

C Print, Other Medium

Tulle no. 46, Nantucket, MA
Located in Sante Fe, NM
“The hovering installations featured in this ongoing series of photographs are inspired by self-organizing, "emergent" systems in nature such as termite mounds, swarming locusts, sch...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Amalfi horizon - Italian coast, sunset sea 80x50cm limited edition 20
Located in London, GB
'Amalfi horizon' Taken in Amalfi, Italy 2020 50x80cm from a limited edition of 20. The Amalfi coastline slowly recedes into the distance, as if being softly erased by the currents...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Color, Giclée

Tulle no. 32, Ocracoke Island, NC
Located in Sante Fe, NM
The hovering installations featured in this ongoing series of photographs are inspired by self-organizing, "emergent" systems in nature such as termite mounds, swarming locusts, scho...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Mama Wata - 21st Century Landscape Portrait Animal Photography Edition
Located in Vienna, AT
Mama Wata - 21st Century Landscape Portrait Animal Photography Edition 4/5+II AP Fine art print is unframed and comes with sticker signed by the artist. In October 2018, Verena Pren...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Color

Untitled (Nr. 0006) Photography 18" x 24" Edition of 24 by Ben Cope & Rowan Daly
Located in Culver City, CA
Untitled (Nr. 0006) Photography 18" x 24" Edition of 24 by Ben Cope & Rowan Daly Signed and numbered by the artist. Unframed - ships rolled in a tube Ben Cope + Rowan Daly Off ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Mama Wata - 21st Century Landscape Portrait Animal Photography Edition
Located in Vienna, AT
Mama Wata - 21st Century Landscape Portrait Animal Photography Edition 3/5+II AP Print is unframed and comes with sticker signed by the artist. In October 2018, Verena Prenner recei...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Color

Mama Wata - 21st Century Landscape Portrait Animal Photography Edition
Located in Vienna, AT
Mama Wata - 21st Century Landscape Portrait Animal Photography Edition 2/5+II AP Print is unframed and comes with sticker signed by the artist. In October 2018, Verena Prenner recei...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Color

Malaysian Contemporary Photography by Jess Hon - Beautiful Stream in Melawati
Located in Paris, IDF
Edition of 10. Fujicolour photo paper.
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Towering Devil
Located in Boulder, CO
Fluted Basalt columns towering nearly 900ft high under the emerging moon at twilight. Standing at the foot of Devil's Tower brings an indescribable prese...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Paper

L. Swallows (Central Park)
Located in New York, NY
Signed and numbered on label, verso 11 x 17 inches // (Edition of 25 + 5 APs) 22 x 34 inches // (Edition of 20 + 4 APs) This work is offered by CLAMP in New York City.
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Falla 3, from the series All the faults of the world, Printed on canvas
Located in Miami Beach, FL
Falla 3, 2021 Archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle smooth canvas. From the series All the faults of the world 37 x 20 inches. Ed 4 Unframed In recent years -through the use, produc...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Canvas

Falla 1, from the series All the faults of the world, Printed on canvas
Located in Miami Beach, FL
Falla 1, 2021 Archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle smooth canvas. From the series All the faults of the world 37 x 20 inches. Edition of 4 Unframed In recent years -through the use...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Canvas

The Crown of the Earth
Located in Boulder, CO
A limited Edition Print by National Geographic Photographer Keith Ladzinski from his “Crown’s of the Earth” collection. This series focuses on the planets most spectacular mountain ranges, risen by tectonic activity and carved by wind, water and time. This truly one of a kind aerial image is comprised of 52 photos stitched into a single ultra-high resolution panoramic of the worlds highest mountain, Mt Everest. Standing tall at 29,029ft (8,848 meters), Mt Everest, known as Chomolungma in the Tibetan tongue, is truly the highest point on earth. Within this highly detailed panoramic you’ll find the subtleties of the surrounding peaks, the Rongbuk glaciers and Miracle Highway below. A cropped version of this photographed graced the cover of National Geographic in 2020 and again in 2022 in a special issue, a magenta scene of alpenglow illuminating the crown...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper

WHITE 11, H-434 – Risaku Suzuki, Nature, Snow, Forest, White, Winter, Japan, Art
Located in Zurich, CH
RISAKU SUZUKI (*1963, Japan) WHITE 11, H-434, 2011 Chromogenic print Sheet 95,2 x 119 cm (37 1/2 x 46 7/8 in.) Edition of 5 (#2/5) ‘Snowflakes are letters sent from heaven.’ – Ukich...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

C Print

Beach Box Purple
Located in New York, NY
Beach Box Purple 2004 Signed, titled, dated, and numbered in ink, verso Archival pigment print (Edition of 25) 14 x 11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm) This work is offered by CLAMP in Ne...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

London Eye, Large Aluminium Print
Located in Deddington, GB
Katie Hallam London eye Digital Photograph Contemporary Art London holds the worlds most exciting architecture and the London Eye is one of them. This i...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Fat Mo's (1/100)
Located in Nashville, TN
A native Tennessean, Bill was born and raised in Memphis. A forty one year career in the Telecommunications field ended in Nashville with his retirement in 2007. With time on his han...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Fat Mo's (1/100)
Located in Nashville, TN
A native Tennessean, Bill was born and raised in Memphis. A forty one year career in the Telecommunications field ended in Nashville with his retirement in 2007. With time on his han...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Untitled (Nr. 0189) Photography 18" x 24" Edition of 20 by Ben Cope & Rowan Daly
Located in Culver City, CA
Untitled (Nr. 0189) Photography 18" x 24" Edition of 20 by Ben Cope & Rowan Daly Unframed - ships rolled in a tube Ben Cope + Rowan Daly Off the Grid Off the Grid is the culmination of a six-year photographic journey through Baja, Mexico. Ben Cope and Rowan Daly began their travels in 2014, working their way through the towns of la Salinas, Baja Mar, and Cantamar, down through Ensanada and la Bufadora. This series of photographs depicts the pair’s adventures and explorations. Off the Grid documents the textures, people, and places visited during this incredible journey. Ben Cope is a Los Angeles based portrait artist with a BFA in ceramic sculpture and photography from Columbus State University. He maintains a successful career with a diverse portfolio including fashion, editorial, celebrity portraiture and advertising. He is widely known for his celebrity and fashion portraiture, which has been published internationally in publications such as Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, GQ, The Work Magazine, Fucking Young, and l’Officiel, and has shot international campaigns for such clients as Adidas, L’Oréal, Paul...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Delacroix
Located in Sante Fe, NM
I have spent seven years photographing visual clues that tell of the beauty, complexity and destruction of South Louisiana. Once formed by sediment deposited by the Mississippi River...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Saint Bernard
Located in Sante Fe, NM
I have spent seven years photographing visual clues that tell of the beauty, complexity and destruction of South Louisiana. Once formed by sediment deposited by the Mississippi River...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Salt'n Sea (California Badlands)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
'Salt'n Sea' (California Badlands) - 2006 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label, artist Inventory No. 4536.08, Not mou...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

C Print, Photographic Paper, Color, Polaroid

Head Shop East Village New York City, Hippie Era
Located in Miami, FL
The early 1970s was a period of reexamination of the state of photography for Mitchell Funk. He broke with the tradition of shooting gritty street photography in black and white and ...
Category

1970s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Archival Ink, Archival Pigment

You Are In My Heart – Jung Lee, Neon, Text, Installation, Landscape, Nature
Located in Zurich, CH
Jung LEE (*1972, South Korea) You are in my heart, 2020 C-Type Print, Diasec Sheet 136 x 200 cm (53 1/2 x 66 7/8 in.) Frame 173,5 x 139,5 x 3,7 cm (68 1/4 x 54 7/8 x 1 1/2 in.) Editi...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

C Print

Untitled (Traintracks) - based on a Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Untitled (Traintracks) - The last Picture Show - 2004 38x37cm. Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Arti...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Joshua Tree, Mojave Desert, California - American landscape color photography
Located in Cambridge, GB
Joshua Tree National Park an extremely interesting rural landscape, made famous through its popularity in pop culture. Here, the Joshua Tree captured in the Mojave Desert at dusk whi...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Winter
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Winter - 2001, 20x29cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the 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...
Category

1990s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Peacocks in Love (Stay) - Polaroid, 21st Century
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
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 Sc...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Seagulls (Zuma Beach) - mounted, 30x40cm
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Seagulls (Zuma Beach) - 1999 - mounted published in 'Instantdreams' (monograph) 30x40cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid, mounted on Dib...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Motel Desert Shores III, Salton Sea, California - American Color Photography
Located in Cambridge, GB
Motel Desert Shores, from Richard Heeps Salton Sea series. This picture has the a vibe of a Southern California American road trip, the colours are so seductive, the palm trees creat...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin

"In the Deep" Lavender Large Scale Abstract Color Photograph, Waterscape Wave
Located in New York, NY
Large Scale Limited edition color photograph, 40"x60" depicting an abstract waterscape with a lavender sky. This contemporary landscape photograph has has a painterly feel; the artist has captured a rising cusp of a wave with blue and cool white, against a violet and pink sky. The photographer Danny...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Winter
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Winter - 2001, 20x29cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid Slide. Signature label and Certifi...
Category

1990s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Winter
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Winter - 2001, 20x29cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid Slide. Signature label and Certifi...
Category

1990s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Planes IX
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Planes IX - 2008 20x24cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory #4634. Not mounted. A ...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Coney Island Skyline (Stay) - Polaroid, 21st Century, Contemporary, Color
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
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 ...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Radha Mind Screen - part 3 (Starnger than Paradise)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Radha Mind Screen II (Stranger than Paradise), 1999, 20x20cm, Artist Proof 1/2, sold out Edition of 10, digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid Certificate and Signature label, artist...
Category

1990s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Foresting - color photography, animal photography
Located in New York, NY
This beautiful color photography was taken in Londonl. It was not filtered, manipulated or color corrected, but a straight shot. It comes print only, but can also come framed or plex...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Hotsprings
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Hotsprings - 2001, 20x29cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid Slide. Signature label and Cer...
Category

1990s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Stefanie Schneider Minis - Saigon - based on a Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Stefanie Schneider's Minis Saigon (Stranger than Paradise), 2003 Signed and signature brand on verso. Lambda digital Color Photographs based on a Polaroid. Sandwiched in between Ple...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Plexiglass, Color, Lambda, Polaroid

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

1990s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Three Girls II (Last Picture Show)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
'Three Girls II' (Last Picture Show), 2006, 20x20cm, Edition 8/10, digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label, artist Inventory No 714.16, not mounted ...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

C Print, Photographic Paper, Color, Polaroid

Hudson Valley Cloud 3718
Located in Bloomington, IL
In the “Hudson Valley Cloud” series Ted Kincaid has meticulously dissected and reassembled sections of works of the American Hudson River School artists...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

"Monterey Dreaming” Large Photography On Canvas Limited Edition 1/10
Located in Carmel, CA
Photography on canvas. Limited Edition (1/10). O. Devan paints that which he doesn't really see. His camera captures a second in time, as if he stops at his tracks and takes a step...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Canvas

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Autumn
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
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 Certifi...
Category

1990s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Seagulls (Zuma Beach)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Seagulls (Zuma Beach) - 1999 published in 'Instantdreams' (monograph) 60x80cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid, Signature label and Cer...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Wonder Wheel - Strange Love
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
'Wonder Wheel' (Strange Love) - 2010 20x25cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and certific...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

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

Ok Corral - part 2- (Stranger than Paradise)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
OK Corral - part 2 - (Stranger than Paradise), - 1999, 20x20 cm, Edition 5/10, digital C-Print based on a 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...
Category

1990s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

C Print, Photographic Paper, Color, Polaroid

New Poppy #01 [From the series Wild Things]
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
New Poppy #01, 2015 [From the series Wild Things] Digital color print based on original Polaroid mounted on Dibond - finished with a matte coating Hand signed & numbered by the artis...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Color, Polaroid

East Hampton Beach with Dramatic Clouds, Color Photography, Clyfford Still
Located in Miami, FL
A single house juts out into a vast sky and sea of Long Island. The image takes inspiration from the epic 19th-century paintings and the American West with vast unending sky and untamed landscapes. Yet the composition is quite radical and evocative of the simple shapes of Color Field painter Clyfford Still...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Archival Pigment

NASA, Landscape Photography of Gemini 2 Space Rodeo above Atlantic Ocean
By Nasa
Located in New york, NY
Space "Rodeo" of American NASA astronaut Richard F. Gordon above the Atlantic Ocean in September 1966. This is an 8" x 10" vintage chromogenic print on fiber paper, numbered in red ...
Category

1960s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, Photographic Film

Contemporary landscape photography for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Contemporary landscape photography available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 21st Century and Contemporary, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. If you’re looking to add landscape photography created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of blue, purple, green, orange and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Stefanie Schneider, Gerald Berghammer, Massimo Listri, and David Burdeny. Frequently made by artists working with Pigment Print, and Paper and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large Contemporary landscape photography, so small editions measuring 0.4 inches across are also available.

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