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Stefanie SchneiderCups III (Suburbia) Contemporary, Polaroid, Analog, Color, Photography2004
2004
$800
£604.53
€698.09
CA$1,117.88
A$1,240.38
CHF 649.74
MX$15,210.40
NOK 8,264.45
SEK 7,801.29
DKK 5,206.08
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About the Item
Cups III (Suburbia) - 2004
50x60cm,
Edition of 10,
Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid,
Signed on verso with Certificate,
Artist inventory number: 2913.
Not mounted.
Stefanie Schneider’s work captures the American West in a way that transcends mere documentation—it distills the mythos of the frontier into something dreamlike, deteriorating, and deeply personal. Her images evoke Ed Ruscha’s fascination with roadside Americana, Georgia O’Keeffe’s reverence for arid landscapes, and Edward Hopper’s haunting loneliness, yet they engage in a unique dialogue with history, both photographic and cultural. How did a German artist become one of the most essential voices in the visual storytelling of the American dream—and its unraveling?
Born in Germany in 1968, Schneider grew up in a divided nation, where the scars of history were still visible in the landscape. This early exposure to ruptured histories and fading ideologies may explain her pull toward the abandoned edges of the American West—a land that once symbolized limitless possibility but now bears the melancholy of faded utopias.
Schneider’s process begins in these liminal spaces—the parched deserts and forgotten highways of Southern California—where she photographs her subjects using expired Polaroid film. The very material of her work embodies impermanence and decay, its chemical imperfections mirroring the breakdown of memory and myth. In Berlin, she develops and enlarges her images by hand, bringing an almost cinematic post-production process to a medium often associated with instant gratification.
Her role in preserving Polaroid film as an artistic medium has placed her at the forefront of a historical crossroads in photography. At a time when instant film was being phased out—a casualty of digital progress—Schneider refused to let it vanish. In doing so, she not only safeguarded a crucial chapter in photographic history but also cemented her place as one of its key narrators, treating Polaroid not as a tool of nostalgia but as a medium uniquely suited to capturing time slipping away.
This tension between preservation and deterioration is central to Schneider’s work. As she told Artnet in 2014, her images are deeply personal explorations of longing, memory, and loss:
"My work resembles my life: Love, lost and unrequited, leaves its mark in our lives as a senseless pain that has no place in the present."
The notion of absence—whether in love, landscapes, or fading cultural dreams—haunts her work. Her subjects, often seen in desolate spaces—trailer parks, oilfields, run-down motels, and empty highways—appear disconnected, isolated even when together. The ghosts of American iconography—the road trip, the drifter, the neon-lit escape—are present, yet they flicker like echoes of a past that may never have existed as we remember it.
In many ways, Schneider’s vision of the American West is a farewell letter—not to the physical place, but to the idea of it. She does not merely document a landscape; she captures the moment it dissolves, leaving behind only traces of what was. In doing so, she ensures that the story of the West, much like her Polaroid film, lingers—imperfect, beautiful, and just beyond our grasp.
- Creator:Stefanie Schneider (1968, German)
- Creation Year:2004
- Dimensions:Height: 19.69 in (50 cm)Width: 23.63 in (60 cm)Depth: 0.04 in (1 mm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Morongo Valley, CA
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU652316222382
Stefanie Schneider
Stefanie Schneider received her MFA in Communication Design at the Folkwang Schule Essen, Germany. Her work has been shown at the Museum for Photography, Braunschweig, Museum für Kommunikation, Berlin, the Institut für Neue Medien, Frankfurt, the Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden, Kunstverein Bielefeld, Museum für Moderne Kunst Passau, Les Rencontres d'Arles, Foto -Triennale Esslingen., Bombay Beach Biennale 2018, 2019.
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20x24cm,
Edition of 10,
Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid,
Signed on verso with Certificate,
Artist inventory number: 2912.
Not mounted.
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Cups - Suburbia - Contemporary, Polaroid, Analog, Color, Photography
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Located in Morongo Valley, CA
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20x24cm,
Edition of 10,
Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid,
Signed on verso with Certificate,
Artist inventory number: 1686.
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By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
You See Me (Suburbia) - 2004
20x24cm,
Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs.
Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid.
Signature label with Certificate.
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Category
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Angie (Suburbia) - Contemporary, Polaroid, Analog, Color, Photography, Portrait
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Angie (Suburbia) - 2004,
20x25cm,
Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs.
Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid.
Certificate and Signature label.
Artist Inventory No. 1697.
Not mounted.
The project "Suburbia" was shot on the set of Marc Forster's first feature film 'Everything put Together' with Radha Mitchell, Michelle Hicks, Megan Mullally, Catherine Lloyd Burns, Matt Malloy and others.
Suburbs collectively, or the people who live in them
Suburb { a district, especially a residential one, on the edge of a city or large town }
synonyms [Outer edge , Fringes, Periphery, Limits, Outer reaches, Environs ]
Sunday in suburbia, a summer's day heavy with heat, hardly a soul to be seen. As a result, the motifs of Stefanie Schneider's “Suburbia” cycle – put together in California, in the very west of the USA – are virtually inconspicuous.Schneider's camera encircles an idyllic American setting, capturing a garden practically empty of people. Surrounded by a white picket fence, flowers and trees bloom profusely in the blazing sunlight. The day is empty and quiet like only a Sunday can be. The grass is perfectly cut, the garden well tended, the inhabitants oblivious to everything and lethargic. An instant is seized, revealing the tragedy of an average, unsuccessful, middle class life.
The scene is familiar from countless movies and American literature; the perfect façade of an American ideal, which seems to conceal the horror of daily life. In David Lynch's „Blue Velvet“ the film begins with the camera rolling over a similar setting: the view over the fence, the painstakingly neatly cut lawn, ending with a close-up: a cut-off ear covered with feasting ants.
Stefanie Schneider overdoes it, she exaggerates: this is confirmed by the irritating colourfulness as well as the vehemence of the motifs. Emptiness stands in stark contrast to the beauty of the blooming roses or the lush growth of the trees. The fenced, idyllic summer scene appears vacant; unused chairs surround a table, the grill untouched and clean, no object out of place. It is only the inhabitants who appear curiously lost. Schneider shows them in the middle of their saturated lives, in well-tended averageness, which can only be endured with a Martini on ice, on hand before lunch. In her opinion the scenes are banal, yet one becomes witness to great intimacy.
Schneider's „Suburbia“ cycle lives from the interplay of the motifs, and tells a story with the same flavour as American author Raymond Carver...
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38x50cm,
Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs.
Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid.
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40x50cm,
Edition of 10,
Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid,
Signed on verso with Certificate,
Artist inventory number: 1742.
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