Contemporary Landscape Photography

Black and white fine art cityscape - landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print, edition of 9. Signed, titled, dated and numbered by artist. Certificate of authenticity includ...

Hyomon, Study 1, Hokkaido, Japan is a black and white, limited edition photograph by photographer Michael Kenna. Michael Kenna is a master of contemporary photography. Known for c...

Artist Statement For me, an artistic process is an act of investigation – a passionate attempt to establish an understanding of the natural world – a version that incorporates both i...

A framed edition of this cyanotype sold to Timothée Chalamet at The Other Art Fair in Los Angeles. One of 10 mini editions of the same photograph printed by hand using the antique ...

Fairy Forest Study 2, Madeira, Portugal - no. 21316 Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 7. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to order in limited editions o...

Edition of 3 1/3 The photograph comes with a certificate of authenticity and a letter of appraisal. Karim - 'Water, Water, Water' Photography on paper. framed. Karim is a very uni...

Chalk Streams 9, 2023 - Sunlight on Water of Natural English Forest Ecosystem by Ellie Davies Chalk Streams 9 is a stunning C-Type Print on Fuji Maxima Matte Paper. This size print ...

Northern Carmine Bee-Eater and Grevy's Zebra by Cheryl Medow is a 21 x 24 inch archival pigment print, available in an edition of 10. This photograph features a colorful bird perched on a branch, with three zebras in a grassy field in the background. The image size 16 x 20 inches, the paper size is 21 x 24 inches. This photograph is signed and numbered in pencil, and blind stamp on print margin by Cheryl Medow. This photograph is signed, titled, dated, and print type in pencil on print verso by Cheryl Medow. This photograph is available in multiple sizes: Paper size: 14 1/2 x 18 in., Image size: 10.4 x 13 in., Edition of 25, $1700 Paper size: 21 x 24 in., Image size: 16 x 20 in., Edition of 10, $2300 Paper size: 31 x 36 in., Image size: 24 x 30 in., Edition of 6, $2900 Santa Barbara art photographer Cheryl Medow creates images that entice the viewer to enter her world, both real and imagined. Cheryl Medow's background in the arts is diverse, but interconnected. Medow studied ceramics at the famed Chouinard Institute and received a BA in Art from UCLA, concentrating on life drawing with charcoal and pastels. Continuing her art education, she studied printmaking at Hand Graphics in Santa Fe, New Mexico. With a wealth of materials and techniques, Medow layers her photographs and weaves them together to create visual narratives. There have been numerous articles written about her work. Avian Alchemy by Becca Cudmore was published by Audubon News/Culture on June 5, 2015, Proof. National Geographic - An Altered Reality by Becky Harlan along with National Geographics Sunday Stills, Sunday, July 12, 2015 and an article in Inspire Adobe Photoshop For The Birds by Alyssa Coppelman in August. In 2016, Medow was included in the SLIDESHOW Night at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Century City, California. She received the Juror's Award at PhotoPlace Gallery in Middlebury Vermont for Great Blue Heron With Chicks Revisited and her print will be exhibited from March 23 through April 22 and White Ibis With Fish will be part of the Online Gallery Annex at PhotoPlace. Medow was a finalist in the 89th Annual International Competition at The Print Center in Philadelphia given the Olcott Family Award. She is also a finalist at the LensCulture Earth Awards 2015. In 2015, Medow's images were exhibited at The G2 Gallery in Venice, CA and at Flock: Birds On The Brink / Ganna Walksa Lotusland, curated by Nancy Gifford...

"Scotland 0030" Photography 18" x 24" Edition of 20 by Ben Cope Unframed - ships rolled in a tube Ben Cope is a Los Angeles based portrait artist with a BFA in ceramic sculpture ...

'Venice #7' 2024 A photograph captured with a Polaroid camera. Printed on the finest archival paper, these limited edition photographs are designed to withstand the test of time, pr...

Archival photo print under museum acrylic. Dimensions: 48 x 48 in. Depth: 1/4 in. Edition of 5 Signed and numbered by the artist. Montreal-based artist and photographer Paul-Émil...

Row of Cypress Trees Study 1, Tuscany - no. 18170 Black and white fine art landscape photography print. Path lined with cypress trees, Tuscany, Italy. Internationally award-winning p...

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...

Digital C-print (Edition of 10) Signed, dated, and numbered, verso 30 x 35.5 inches, sheet 22 x 27 inches, image This photograph is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Ple...

'Dolomites' 2022 It is a black and white film photograph of Dolomite mountains, made using a 4x5 Large format camera Linhof. Ugne Pouwell does all the processing and printing in the...

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

'Nathan's, Coney Island NY' by Morgan Silk is a black and white Archival Inkjet Print. Available in this size in an Edition of 20. Image size: 14.5" x 14.5" Sheet size: 17" x 24" ...

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...

Our gallery has the most extensive art photography of New York City, due to our abiding love for the city. We present the work of different photographers, some of whom are emerging t...

Anyway the Wind Blows - 2017 25x19cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid. Signature label with certificate. Artist inventory PL2...

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...

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...

Baltic Ice, Kakumaee 004 is a limited-edition photograph by German contemporary artist Bernhard Lang. This photograph is a limited edition of 8 copies, it is sold framed. Dimension...

'Flight' 2025 Cotton canvas print. Printed on Organic 280gsm cotton canvas, this limited edition photograph is designed to withstand the test of time. Using water-based pigment ink...

Field of Pink Tulips, Color Nature Photography by Geoffrey Baris Archival pigment print on museum fine art paper Edition of 7 Includes certificate of authenticity. Signed and number...

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...

Black and white fine art long exposure waterscape - landscape photography. Skogafoss gigantic waterfall, Iceland. Archival pigment ink print, edition of ...

C-print Signed, titled, dated, and numbered, verso (Edition of 10) This photograph is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. About the artist: Christopher Harris’s devastati...

Laurel Forest Study 4, Portugal - no. 21281 Color fine art landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 5. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made ...

Pete Kasprzak’s passion for city life is expressed in his dynamic urban artworks. Kasprzak’s artworks express energy and life with animated brush strokes. He adds dynamic movement an...

Color fine art cityscape - landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 7. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to order in limited editions on ...

New as of Jan. 1, 2025. This is a brand-new addition to the artist's ever-growing series of foggy woods in northern California near San Francisco. These tall eucalyptus trees are the...

"Diver in a Lost Paradise" Photography 39 x 29.5 in Edition of 4 by Lukas Dvorak 39" x 29.5" inch Pigment print on Epson Fine ART paper 2016 Ships rolled in a tube ABOUT THE ART...

Chromogenic Print – Unframed Free Shipping – Ask us for custom framing options. 40 x 48 inches - edition of 5 48 x 60 inches - edition of 5 71 x 88.5 inches - edition of 5 "My ph...

These are three 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 the nine...

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 ...

A contemporary black-and-white photograph by Roberta Fineberg that captures the San Remo building and New York City skyline after dark from the urban oasis of Central Park. Focusing on the beaux-arts building towers or twin Greek temples...

Jill Peters finds her inspiration in the quickly changing architectural landmarks of her youth, like the demolished Miami Herald building, an abandoned roller coaster...

Limited Edition of 6 More sizes on request Sebastian Copeland is considered a photographer "who has created works of outstanding artistic quality and conveys messages of urgent glob...

Palm Springs Palm Trees (Californication) - 2023 20x20cm. Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist I...

*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 ...

Tree and Pond, Ghent NY, 2018 pigment print on watercolor paper, signed dated and numbered on face 20 X 24, edition of 25 $2,500.00 also available in 13 x 16 inches, edition of 25 $1,500 This Black and White Sepia-toned print of a pond in upstate New York was taken by photographer, James Bleecker. The rural scene depicts a leafy tree streaming with sunlight. The pond in the background is surrounded by trees and reflects some of the golden light. Artist Statement: These photographs span the last decade of nearly four that I have worked in the Hudson River valley. While I have photographed landscapes, towns and cities, I have chosen a selection of rural scenes for this show. All are in Columbia County except “Allee,” (Tuxedo Park) and Quimby Farm (Marlborough). My photography spans four decades of living in the Hudson River Valley. While my Dutch ancestors settled here early - Bleecker and Verplanck are common place names - I don't know what, if any, pull that fact exerts. Certainly I'm attracted to the layers of time exposed here; in ancient stone walls, leaning barns, faded mansions and mill towns. The valley exudes boom and bust, love and leavings. About the Artist: James Bleecker photographs the landscapes and architecture of his native New York State. Since 1983 his work has spanned independent fine art photography and commercial architectural photography. Much of his work has been commissioned by museums and historic preservation groups in the Hudson River valley. About James’s work, Edgar Munhall, Curator Emeritus of The Frick Collection, has written, "James's work is powerful and mature. Rigorously composed and technically perfect, his photographs can reduce you to tears by their beauty." Collections: Berkshire Museum Barry Diller...

'Prevail' 2022 120 x 96 cm printed on organic cotton canvas, limited edition of 5 + 1AP Canvas fixed on bamboo fixtures, to be and hanged as a scroll. Photograph is signed and st...

Village Motel - Heated Pool (The Last Picture Show) - 2005 58x56cm, Edition of 5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Chrystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid...

"Malibu's Most Wanted" Photography 45" x 60" inch Edition of 3 by Brendan North Available sizes: Edition of 15: 18" x 24" inch Edition of 7: 27" x 36" inch Edition of 3: 45" x 60" i...

Hiroshi Sugimoto Photogenic Drawings (Hand Signed), 2012 Offset Lithograph Poster. (Hand signed by Hiroshi Sugimoto) Unframed This offset lithograph poster was hand-signed by photogr...

"We Are Particles 2" Photography 50" x 40" inch Edition of 12 by Rob Woodcox Hahnemuhle Torchon Matte FineArt Paper (archival) Ships in a tube 2019 ABOUT Rob Woodcox Rob Woodcox...

Massimo Listri Teatro La Scala II - Milano, 2000 C-Print Edition of 5 The photographer is based in Florence, and is fascinated how his architectural s...

The blurring of time and space captured in time-lapse photography while the photographer is in motion has resulted in a lined pale beach, cerulean water and a darker sapphire sky str...

Framed large scale original photograph of the Mediterranean marble quarries in Carrara, Italy, iconic material source of classic Italian art and architecture, captured with a large format camera to allow epic scale print sizes with incredible image details Marmo di Carrara...

'Spring Flood' is a black and white landscape photograph taken near the Chattahoochee River. Additional sizes are available. This listing is for an unframed print, edition 2/10. Richard Skoonberg is inspired by the work of Eliot Porter...

Mountains (Strange Love) - 2003 40x60cm, Edition of 5 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a 35mm film. Signature label and certificate. Not mounted. A piece of Ste...

One Way (The Last Picture Show) - 2002, 48x47cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist I...

Aditya Dicky Singh Untitled Infrared photograph on fine-art Hahnemuhle archival paper 44" x 65" unframed (112cm x 165cm) 2019 Edition 1/15 *Should you wish the photograph to be...

Big Sur by Frank Schott 26 x 40 inches / 66cm x 102cm signed edition of 25 48 x 72 inches / 122cm x 183cm signed edition of 7 archival quality fine art pigment print limit...

Massimo Listri Teatro La Scala II - Milano, 2000 C-Print Edition of 5 The photographer is based in Florence, and is fascinated how his architectural s...

Black and White Fine Art Long Exposure Cityscape Photography. Grand Canal View from Rialto Bridge, Venice, Italy. Archival pigment ink print, edition of 7. Signed, titled, dated and ...

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...

'May Morning in Yellow' 60 x 40" Master Edition Limited edition (1 of 5) archival photograph, hand signed and numbered. Unframed _________________ Illumina...

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...