Polaroid Photography

29 Dreams (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist inventory ...

Waiting (The Princess and her Lover) - 2009 Including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 192 pages, hardcover, published by Snap Collective, 2024. ...

A Young Bride with a Strong Headache - 2020 40x50cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Photograph printed on Fuji glossy paper, based on a reclaimed Fuji Instant Film Negative....

Gabriela at Seven (2015) 25x25 cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Giclée Print on Hahnemühle Fine Art Baryta, based on a Fuji Instant Film (not mounted) Bombay Beach Biennale ...

Madonna - 2008 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #335 Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider's scint...

Oasis II (Sidewinder) - 2005 38x37cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #300...

Tricksy (Beachshoot) - 2005 featuring Radha Mitchell 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Arti...

Interstate Flashback (Vegas) - 2004 55x72cm, Edition 4/5, Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the original Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate artist inve...

Starburst - 2022 40x50cm. Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival Print based on a mixed-media collage of an original Polaroid on Hahnemuhle photo rag paper. Signature labe...

12121 Amboy Road (California Badlands) - 2010 20x24cm, Edition of 10, digital C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 10910. Not moun...

The Muse (29 Palms, CA) - 2009 38x37cm, Edition of 5, Artist Proof 1/2, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the Artist, mounted on Aluminum with matte UV-Protection, based on the Pol...

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...

Untitled (Olancha) - 2006 38x37cm. Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 822. Not mo...

Was I Dreaming? (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 50x50cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Ar...

Springtime (Paris) - 1995 Edition of 5, 50x60cm including white borders. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist and based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. A...

Wild Things (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005, 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Invent...

Oasis VIII (Sidewinder) - 2005 38x37cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #3...

'Paperback Writer' (Bombay Beach) 2019, 20x20cm, Edition 1/7 plus 2 Artist Proofs, digital C-Print based on a Polaroid, not mounted. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist ...

Shadows (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #35...

Joshua Tree National Park (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 50x49cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label....

Oasis XII (Sidewinder) - 2005 38x37cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #30...

Oasis IV (Sidewinder) - 2005 38x37cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #300...

Oasis III (Sidewinder) - 2005 38x37cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #30...

Gone (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 40x48cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Arti...

But I Love You (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 40x48cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certific...

Roys (Amboy), 2018, 20x24cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid. Signature label with certificate. Artist Inventory Number PL201...

If you love me then why can’t it work? (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 40x48cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Sign...

I can’t be without you (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 40x48cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and ...

The End of Love (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 40x48cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certifi...

Henry and Athena - Henry's Memory Sequence (Stay) - 2006 featuring Ryan Gosling and Elizabeth Reaser 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate...

You’re right. You’re always right (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 40x48cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature...

Circle of Magic - Sorcery (29 Palms, CA) - 2009, 40x48cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist ...

Endless Summer (Beachshoot) - 2005 38x37cm. Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #1413....

A Vision you can't Capture (29 Palms, CA) - 2007 20x24cm each, 20x80cm installed. 3 Archival C-Prints, based on the 3 original Polaroids. Signature label and certificate. Artist I...

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Walking Lulu - triptych - 2001, 20x80cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid Slide. Signatur...

Forest White (The Last Picture Show) - 2005 125x128cm, Edition 3/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid. Signature lab...

'Ryan Gossling' (Stay) - 2006, 20x20cm, Edition of 2/10, digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid Certificate and Signature label artist Inventory No. 2447.02 Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider: Torsten Scheid, “Fotografie, Kunst, Kino. Revisited.”, FilmDienst 3/2006, page 11-13

 Photography Art Cinema. Revisited Stay expands a traditional connection through new facets Interwoven between the media of photography and film is a veritable mesh-work of technical, motific, metaphorical and personal interrelationships. Extending from photo-film which, as in La Jetée by Chris Marker (France, 1962) is a montage of single, unmoving photographs all the way to the portrayal of photographic motifs in Hollywood cinema―most recently in Memento (USA, 2000) and One hour photo (USA, 2002)―is the range of filmic-photographic interactions on the one hand, and from the adaption of modes of cinematic production to the imitation of film stills on the other. For instance, with the legendary Untitled Film Stills (1978) of the American artist Cindy Sherman, who later made her debut as a film director with Office Killer (USA, 1997) and thereby, like many others, changed sides: Wim Wenders, Robert Frank and Larry Clark are doubtlessly the most successful of these photographic-filmic border crossers. This brief survey provides only a vague indication of the dimensions of this intermedial field, which in fact extends much further and is constantly being cultivated. Also as a motif in film, photography has experienced a historical transformation: Photographers were once considered to be technicians who mastered a craft but never achieved the status of artists. Photographer-figures were caught in the allure of beautiful appearance, incapable of penetrating to the actual essence of things. Such depth was reserved for literature or painting. When photography in film touched upon the sphere of art, then most often as its contrasting model, as the metaphor for a superficial access to the world. Coming to mind are Fred Astaire as a singing fashion photographer in Stanley Donen’s musical film Funny Face (USA, 1957), or the restless lifestyle-photographer in Michelangelo Antonioni’s genre-classic Blow up (GB, 1966). For the doubting Thomas, only that exists which can be photographed. He ultimately enters the world of fantasy and thereby the field of art only unwillingly, when he becomes entangled in the world of his images. The last of his detail-enlargements shows only the photographic grain and has lost all connection to reality. The photograph looks as if it had been painted by Bill, the painter who is both friend and antagonist to the protagonist.

 Photography as Art It was first around the end of the last century that numerous filmmakers discovered photography as a genuine art form. In The Bridges of Madison County (USA, 1995) a sensitive Clint Eastwood stands, camera in hand, on the threshold of artistic status, and in Smoke (USA, 1994) a tobacco merchant ripens into a philosopher through his involvement in photography. Finally, in John Water’s parody of the art market, Pecker (USA, 1998), a provincial tom-fool is hyped into celebrated stardom amid the New York art scene because of his blurred snapshots. This film about a postmodern Kaspar Hauser in photographic art (with clear parallels to Richard Billingham, the British shooting star of the nineteen-nineties), not only takes into account the exponentially expanded significance of photography in the art market, but also attributes to photography an extreme degree of conformity to the “operating system” of the visual arts. This admittedly ironic equation of photography and the visual arts is new. It is repeated with much more earnestness in Lisa Chollondencko’s High Art (USA) from the same year. Artistic photography has finally become established in a cinematic context.

 
Stay Stay (USA, 2005) could have fitted in seamlessly here. Considering that the films High Art and Pecker establish photography as an ideal art form at the end of the millennium, director Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland) takes a step backward; he revives an anti-technical, intuitive concept of art, including the customary clichés about madness and genius. This choice documents less an anachronistic notion of art (especially considering that painting is currently experiencing a Renaissance) than instead the appraisal that paintings are more suitable for representing the free objectification of the mind. Stay is not an artist-film but rather a psycho-thriller in which the borders between dream and reality become blurred.
 The psychiatrist Sam Foster (Ewan McGregor) has saved his girlfriend, the artist Lila (played by Naomi Watts) from committing suicide. Now he is attempting to keep another patient, the art student Henry Letham (Ryan Gosling...

Leaving Town (Sidewinder) - 2005 80x80cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 3...

Desert Living (California Dreaming) - 2017 20x24m, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventor...

Henry watching Athena Dance (Stay) III - with Ryan Gosling - 2006 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Invento...

Today's Heros (Suburbia) - 2004 20x24cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid, Not mounted, Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 330.01. Stefani...

Fish (Stay) - 2006, 20x24cm, Edition 4/5. Archival C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, matte surface, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and cer...

Meeting in front of Church (Sidewinder) - 2007 Edition 2/5, each 30x37cm, installed 30x160cm. 4 analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist, based on the 4 oirginal Polaroids. Ce...

Unknown Girl 01 - Street Portraits (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 Edition of 10, 40x40cm. Archival Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Invento...

Lerici '25 is an original black and white Polaroid photograph captured on SX-70 film along the Ligurian coastline of Italy. The image is part of a limited edition of 20, hand-signed ...

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. Stefanie Schne...

Desert Playground (Oxana's 30th Birthday) - part of the 29 Palms, CA project - 2007 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. ...

"Harvest" is an original piece by Shawn Theodore made from found/family photos, polaroid lift, acrylic on wood panel. Theodore delves into the specific experiences of African American families, capturing a longing for lost photographs, missing heirlooms, and vanished archives. Using a blend of traditional portraiture, found photographs, paint, paper, pencils, and digital manipulation, Theodore creates archetypes representing hypothetical family members, spiritual guardians, and ancestors. These boldly crafted archetypes inhabit an imagined macro-family album, offering a unique perspective on portraiture, connection, and community. Theodore's work aims to deepen spiritual connections and encourage personal introspection. This pieces measures 13.25”h x 17.25”w and comes with a gallery-issued Certificate of Authenticity. Shawn Theodore (b. 1970) was born in Germany to American parents from Philadelphia, and currently lives and works in Philadelphia. Theodore was awarded the prestigious PDN’s 30 New & Emerging Photographers to Watch (2019), the Getty Images / ARRAY ‘Where We Stand’ grant, and a grant from the Knight Foundation for ‘A Dream Deferred’. Theodore was a two-time nominee for the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Fellowship and a nominee for the Magnum Foundation Fund. He is an Associate Adjunct Professor at the University of the Arts, a trustee of The Print Center, a trustee of the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, and a former trustee of the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. Theodore was announced as a two-time nominee of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Fellowship and a nominee of the Magnum Foundation Fund in 2018. In the following years 2019 and 2020, he was awarded the PDN's 30 New & Emerging Photographers to Watch and AI-AP American Photography 35. He has had several solo exhibitions and is included in several group exhibitions. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; the collection of the Philadelphia Library, Drexel University's Center for Black Culture, the Mennello Museum of American Art, Orlando; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Walker Center, Minneapolis; the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C.; the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; and the Legacy Museum, Montgomery, among others. Artist photo...

Flying (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist Inventory ...

Unicorn (The Last Picture Show - 2005 20x20cm. Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #1...

Duet (Till Death do us Part) - 2016 50x50cm, Edition of 10. Archival C- Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist inventory number: 9441. Not mounted....

'Oxana and Hans' (Stage of Consciousness), part 6 - 2007, 41x52cm, sold out Lumas Edition of 147, Artist Proof 2/3, Lambda Print, Not mounted Certificate and signature label, art...

The Princess (The Princess and her Lover) - 2009 Edition of 2/5, 125x123cm. Analog C-Print, hand printed by the artist and based on the Polaroid, mounted on Aluminum with matte ...

Drowning the Noise - 2020 20x20cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid. Signature label with certificate. Artist inventory - PL202...

Untitled (Beachshoot) - 2005 38x37cm. Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #1410. Not ...

In The Range Of Light I (Wastelands) - 2003 Edition 3/5 , 57x56cm. analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid. Artist inventor...

'Untitled 10' (Cyndi Lauper) from the 'Bring Ya to the Brink' record Album) - 2009 20x20cm, Edition of 5, Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid, Not mounted, Certificate and si...

Renée's Dream (29 Palms, CA) - 2005 32 pieces, Edition 3/5, 31 x 38 cm each, installed 276 x 164 cm including gaps. 32 analog C-Prints, hand printed by the artist, based on 27 or...

Untitled (The Last Picture Show), 2005 38x36cm, Edition 2/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the original SX-70 Polaroid. Inventory No. 781.02. 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...

Beloved (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 65x80cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and certificate. Artist Inventory ...