Contemporary Landscape Photography

Edition of 3 Signed, titled, dated and numbered by Jeanine Michna-Bales Archival pigment print Image size: 32 x 40 in. From series, Standing Together: Inez Milholland's Final Campaign for Women...

Edition of 25 Titled, dated and numbered in black ink on print margin. Paper size: 16 x 20 in. Image size: 11 1/2 x 16 3/4 in.

Mesmerizing large scale photograph from artist's Seascape series, a body of works capturing the tactile surfaces and monochromatic nature of oceanic water and cloudscapes Seascape ...

*22x30" editions and 24x36" editions are platinum prints. Editions with a width of 60" or greater are archival pigment prints* Baobabs are one of Africa’s natural wonders: they can live more than 2,500 years, and their massive, water-storing trunks can grow to more than one hundred feet in circumference. They also serve as a renewable source of food, fiber, and fuel, as well as a focus of spiritual life. But now, suddenly, the largest baobabs are dying off , literally collapsing under their own weight. Scientists believe these ancient giants are being dehydrated by drought and higher temperatures, likely the result of climate change. Photographer Beth Moon, already responsible for some of the most indelible images of Africa’s oldest and largest baobabs, has undertaken a new photographic pilgrimage to bear witness to this environmental catastrophe and document the baobabs that still survive. In this oversize volume, she presents breathtaking new duotone tree portraits of the baobabs of Madagascar, Senegal, and South Africa. She also recounts her eventful journey to visit these fantastic trees in a moving diaristic text studded with color travel photos.

'Morning. Noon. Night' part of the series 'A girl called N.' 2019, 19x25cm, Edition 1/7 plus 2 Artist Proofs, digital C-Print based on a Polaroid, not mounted. Signed on the back and...

Dayworker (American Depression), diptych - 1999 Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. 58x57cm each, 58x122cm installed including an 8cm gap in between both pieces. 2 analog C-Prin...

Black and White Fine Art Landscape Photography. Row of trees at the field with big clouds, Weinviertel, Austria. Archival pigment ink print, edition of 9. Signed, titled, dated and n...

'Porto Venere No.3' Lerici, Italy 2024 Limited edition of 20. Printed on Hahnemühle photo rag Baryta 308 Gsm fine art paper, these limited edition photographs are designed to with...

Every silver lining - 2020 50x50cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs, digital C-Print based on a Polaroid. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2020-980. N...

Black and white fine art long exposure waterscape - landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 7. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to orde...

Black and white fine art photography Gerald Berghammer. Archival Pigment Ink Print, Printed 2022. Limited Edition 1/7. Signed, numbered, dated by Artis. Handmade wood frame, black, n...

Black and White Fine Art waterscape long exposure photography - Boat house in fog at the beautiful Almsee, Austria. Archival pigment ink print, edition of 9. Signed, titled, dated an...

Black and white fine art landscape photography. Single tree in the cornfield during a storm and giant clouds, Austria. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 15. ...

Michael Kenna is a master of contemporary photography. Known for clean compositions, long exposures and minimalist aesthetics, Kenna’s signature style remains highly influential amon...

In 2015 I visited many ancient olive groves in Italy. The Province of Lecce is known for having the oldest trees. The groves, only accessible by stone paths or mule tracks, give a se...

Marie Craig's ‘Harbor Bridge 3’ is an original photograph of the underside of the Sydney (Australia) Harbor Bridge, partially obscured with vines and branches. This piece was created...

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

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

Black and white fine art landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 9. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to order in limited editions on Ha...

Aditya Dicky Singh Untitled Photograph on fine-art Hahnemuhle archival paper 65" x 44" unframed (165cm x 112cm) 2017 Edition 1/15 *Should you wish the photograph to be printed ...

Joshua Tree American Desert photograph from Richard Heeps' series, Dream in Colour. The iconic Joshua Tree stands proudly silhouette against the magical rich layered hues of the dese...

Black and white fine art minimalist landscape photography. The dark hedges, mystical avenue of trees in north Ireland. Archival pigment ink print, edition ...

Captured in the iconic home of speed, Bonneville Salt Flats, the powerful iconic Ford Coupe Land Speed Racing Car sits in the foreground of the powerful expansive landscape. This ar...

Saucer Over Northern Plains, limited edition, signed, archival pigment ink The adrenaline of seeing Mother Nature during some of her finest moments will be ingrained in me forever. It is a humbling experience - and I feel fortunate to have witnessed her power and grandeur over the past 12 years. My experiences are hard to describe in words During this last trip (July 2021) we traveled over 6400 miles in 10 days crossing through 10 different states - all in my quest/passion to photograph these storm systems. But this time the events of the last year made me more aware, opened my eyes wider, and had a different effect on me. The effects of Climate Change have become obvious. The current patterns are changing and they are accelerating faster than anyone realized or predicted. Just over the past decade, the characteristics of the Jet Stream and the Gulf Stream have changed. Pandemics, droughts, devastating heatwaves, wildfires, massive floods, and rising oceans are accelerating. As I sit here in my house in Lone Pine, CA in 103-degree heat I can hardly see the outlines of Lone Pine Peak and Mount Whitney...

'Bay of Poets' Lerici, Italy 2023 Limited edition of 20 Photograph shot using mid-century large format film camera Linhof. Printed on archival Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper....

Black and white fine art landscape photography. Antelope Canyon sandstone formation detail, Page, Arizona, USA. Archival pigment ink print as part of a...

Oil Fields #27, Bakersfield, California 2004 Signed and numbered, verso Chromogenic print (Edition of 100) 8 x 10 inches (20.3 x 25.4 cm) This work is of...

Black and white fine art landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 9. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to order in limited editions on Ha...

Black and white fine art landscape photography print. Winding path through the cypresses trees avenue in the beautiful Tuscany, Italy. Archival pigment ink print, edition of 9. Signe...

Aditya Dicky Singh, Untitled, Infrared photograph on fine-art Hahnemuhle archival paper *please note this artwork can be printed at any size so long as the ratio remains the sam...

Aditya Dicky Singh Untitled photograph on fine-art Hahnemuhle archival paper 44" x 65" unframed (112cm x 165cm) 2016 Edition 1/8 A certificate of Authenticity will be issued by...

Ed. 4/10, includes white frame. "Group of Surfers" is part of Christophe von Hohenberg's ongoing series of minimal, dreamlike images captured on the beaches of America’s Northeaster...

Black and white fine art long exposure waterscape - landscape photography. Alabaster coast with the Sea Arch and the cliffs of Estate in Normandy, France. Archival pigment ink print ...

a large scale photograph of lush emerald green nature biotope, a highly detailed observation of the natural beauty of the Northern California redwood forest Redwoods by Erik Pawassa...

Limited Edition of 10 More sizes on request Sebastian Copeland is considered a photographer "who has created works of outstanding artistic quality and conveys messages of urgent glo...

Leaving (Strange Love) - 2005 20x30cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a 35mm film. Signature label and certificate. Not mounted. In an age of in...

Leaving (Strange Love) - 2005 20x30cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a 35mm film. Signature label and certificate. Not mounted. “I never remembe...

Contemporary aerial landscape photograph of blue, gray, green and teal farm fields captured from the photographer's plane over La Mancha, Spain Archival digital print, edition 5 of 2...

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...

Untitled (Cowboys and Angels) - 2005 39x50cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. artist Inventory No...

Olancha (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999, 6 pieces Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs, 98x96cm each, 205x302cm installed with gaps. 6 archival C-Prints, based on the 6 Polaroids. S...

Cyd Fontaine (Lausanne, 1992) is a contemporary artist renowned for her captivating use of dreamy atmospheric gradients, which has helped her carve a distinctive niche in the world of digital art. Drawing inspiration from the ethereal beauty of nature, Fontaine's artistic journey has taken her on an imaginative exploration of space, depth, and emotion through the medium of large digital prints. Her signature style is characterized by the use of vast, immersive gradients that seem to stretch infinitely across space. These gradients evoke a sense of enigmatic calmness, inviting viewers to lose themselves in the expanse of her visual landscapes. Her ability to create a feeling of boundless depth and space within her pieces, combined with subtle minimalist compositions, is a testament to her mastery of the digital medium. Fontaine’s pieces resonate with audiences seeking a connection to the sublime, offering a window into a world where colors blend seamlessly and boundaries dissolve. Her work can be found in several private collections throughout Europe and the United States. She currently lives and works between Barcelona and Lausanne. Details: Title: Dawn from an Airplane...

Les Vacances II The west coast of France is a place to eat delectable oysters, drink fine wines and walk along endless beaches in the glare of the summer sun. The Atlantic swell and...

'Bluebell Dream', 2017 Edition 2/7 plus 2 Artist Proof Based on a Polaroid, digital C-Print, not mounted. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2017-306 Kirste...

Marie Craig's 'Abbey Ruin 7’ is an original deep blue photograph of the architectural ruins of an Abbey partially obscured with vines and branches. This piece was created using cyano...

Black and white fine art long exposure waterscape - landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 9. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to orde...

This photograph is unframed. Jerry Siegel is inspired by the work of William Christenberry, Sally Mann, Andrew Moore, Walker Evans and Jim Dow. ...

large scale original photograph of vintage TV set with iconic western movie in American wild west landscape Cowboy TV by Frank Schott 30 x 40...

Aditya Dicky Singh, Untitled, Infrared photograph on fine-art Hahnemuhle archival paper *please note this artwork can be printed at any size so long as the ratio remains the same...

Black and white fine art long exposure waterscape - landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 7. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to orde...

Black and white fine art long exposure waterscape - cityscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 9. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to orde...

Black and white fine art landscape photography. Old Laurisilva tree in the fairy forest at foggy mystical mood, Fanal, Madeira, Portugal. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limi...

Winter (The Last Picture Show) - 2005, 50x49cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist I...

Archival Pigment Print Ranch adjacent to Yellowstone All available sizes & editions for each size of this photograph: 30" x 40” - Edition of 5 + 2 Artist Proofs 40" X 50"- Edition ...

Met him in a motel room - 2020 20x20cm, Edition 1/7 plus 2 Artist Proofs, Digital C-print, Based on an original Polaroid. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist invento...

Mesmerizing large scale photograph from artist's Seascape series, a body of works capturing the tactile surfaces and monochromatic nature of oceanic water and cloudscapes Seascape ...

Southwold Pier, waterscape photograph from Richard Heeps' series, On-Sea. Symmetry of the architectural structure draws your eyes hypnotically to the horizon as the sun is setting on...

Black and white fine art panorama landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 9. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to order in limited editi...

This rare photograph #26, taken during The Central Park Gates Project in 2005 by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, was never released to the public as the couple were not satisfied with the image. Every initial photograph, numbered #25 to #30, had to be retaken by their primary photographer, Wolfgang Volz. This copy is from the unpublished edition, making it a unique and highly collectible piece. The project, which consisted of 7,503 gates along 23 miles of pathways, transformed the park into a vibrant, immersive art...

Carpe diem, 2017, Edition 4/7, 2 APs 24x30cm Digital C-print, based on a Polaroid, Not mounted. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2017-154 Kirsten Thys ...

Stand, 2017, Edition 2/7 Based on a Polaroid Digital C-print, not mounted. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2017-156 Kirsten Thys van den Audenaerde is a ...

Edition of 45 Signed, titled, negative date, print date and numbered. Sepia toned gelatin silver print Michael Kenna's black and white photographs are powerful and alluring. His ima...

David Gibson is primarily a self-taught photographer. Years of developing and refining his photographic technique have afforded him much recognition. He has also photographed extensi...

Edition of 45 Signed, tiled, negative date, print date and numbered. Sepia toned gelatin silver print Michael Kenna's black and white photographs are powerful and alluring. His ...

Aditya Dicky Singh Untitled Infrared photograph on fine-art Hahnemuhle archival paper 53" x 36" unframed (135cm x 91cm) 2016 Edition 5/10 Aditya Dicky Singh's images have ent...

This beautify color photography was taken in Israel near Caesarea. It comes print only, but can also come framed or plexiglas mounted (additional cost). If you are interested, please...

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...

Study III is a limited-edition photograph by contemporary artist Luca Marziale. This photograph is sold unframed as a print only. All prints are signed and numbered. Contact us reg...

Ground Control (Stranger than Paradise) - 2008 40x40cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inv...

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

Dreamscape (Wastelands), Proof before Printing, 2003, Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, matte surface, based on an expired Polaroid, not mount...

Black and White Fine Art Waterscape Photography. Avenue of trees by a water ditch with reflections in the calm water. Archival pigment ink print, edition of 9. Signed, titled, dated ...

Breathing I (Deconstructing) - 2015 - about the narrative potential of images. 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid, Artist Inventory 15835. Signature...