Late 20th Century Photography

11 x 14" vintage silver gelatin photograph, of the New York City Ballet performing, an unusual backstage silhouette, 1980 Comes directly from the ...

Artist: Jeffrey Mayer Limited Edition: Signed and hand numbered in the margin, archival pigment print on 100% cotton paper with a Baryta finish. Authorized worldwide release of 100 ...

Signed limited edition print of The Clash, featuring Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon, photographed by Brian Aris in London. Br...

Kurt Cobain - Signed Limited Edition Print Melody Maker Magazine August 30 1992 Reading (photos by Kevin Westenberg) NB All prints are signed and numbered by the artist. Unf...

M (Immaculate Springs) - 1998 - 20x20cm, Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artist inventory...

sepia toned silver gelatin print, edition 1 of 25 17.5 x 17.5 inches unframed, 30.5 x 30.5 inches framed Frame is dark brown wood molding, 8 ply antique white mat and glass Sepia toned silver gelatin print of a serenely still lake in Louisiana When Time Stands Still. The Photographs of David Halliday Whether traveling to a foreign land, wandering through a neighborhood marketto shop for food, or engaging in convivial conversation with a friend at his home,David Halliday is easily charmed, intrigued, excited, or amused by all that surroundshim. An artful documenter of life, Haliday uses his camera as a tool for recording themultitudinous special moments that capture his attention. Once in the darkroom, heeditorializes his finds, subtly embellishing each image until it somehow evokes thesensation that led him to photograph a subject in the first place. With the exception of a series of platinum print portraits, Halliday produces all of hisphotographs as sepia toned silver gelatin prints. Both processes are highly trad-itional and, in requiring that the artist avoid the use of any color other than sepia,they stand in sharp contrast to splashier modes such as Cibachrome, Polaroid, or digitally produced Iris prints […]. For Halliday, the warm tones afforded by age-old processes reflect his desire to reclaim the past or cherish the present in the form of soft, tranquil, frozen moments...

Saint-Tropez Beach 1971 by Slim Aarons Slim Aarons Limited Estate Edition The beach at Saint-Tropez, on the French Riviera, August 1971. unframed c type print printed 2023 20 x 2...

MICHAEL CHILDERS Andy Warhol in his New York studio, 1976 Photographic print Printed in 2007 Signed boldly on the front in black felt tip pen by photographer Michael Childers Frame included: in the original frame as donated by the photographer to the Palm Springs Art Museum This is one of a series of portraits of Andy Warhol by Michael Childers, founding photographer of Warhol's Interview and After Dark magazines, taken in his New York studio and Paris from 1976-1980. This work is signed on the front and framed. It was acquired from the Palm Springs Art Museum, where it was donated by the artist. The verso of the frame bears the works title, original year in felt tip marker, and the artist's studio stamp with copyright of 2007 (year printed) Another example of this work was exhibited at the Palm Springs Art Museum and a different example is part of the Michael Childers collection at the Las Vegas Art Museum Measurements: Artwork (visible): 7 x 9 7/8 inches Frame: 12 x 15 x .4 inches Michael Childers Biography: Since the 1960s, Michael Childers has been photographing famous people...

Artist(s): Oasis, Liam Gallagher, Noel Gallagher, Manchester Music Location: Wembley Stadium, London Date: July 2000 Era: The 2000's Edition: hand signed limited edition 7/50 Print type: Giclée Print Paper type: Archival 310gsm cotton based rag paper Noel & Liam Gallagher from Oasis backstage before performing onstage at Wembley Stadium in July 2000 printed this year paper size 31 x41 cm / 12 x 16 inches © Jill Furmanovsky Accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity 'I feel blessed to have photographed so many extraordinary musicians over my 50-year career. Their music formed a soundtrack to my life and has inspired my work. This exhibition at Proud is homage to their magical gifts. ‘No Music No Life’ says it all.' Jill Furmanovsky Her legacy is profound.' Gail Buckland (guest curator and author of 'Who Shot Rock & Roll - Brooklyn Museum) 'She reveals you to yourself.' Nile Rodgers (Chic) 'Through the honesty of Jill’s work, we are brought closer to the frailty and humanity of celebrity.' (Neville Brody, designer of The Face Magazine) 'Jill is one of my favourite photographers of all time.' Jools Holland Jill Furmanovsky body of work exudes at its heart her love of music and unique ability to capture its vibrancy and spirit throughout her career. Her intimate and candid shots of Oasis reflect her close relationship with the band during their zenith. Rockarchive founder, Jill Furmanovsky, was born and brought up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Her parents moved to London in 1965 when she was eleven. As a teenager, she became a Beatles fan and often stood outside Abbey Road Studio hoping to catch sight of them. Her first rock shot was of Paul McCartney and two school friends taken on a Kodak Instamatic outside of his home in St. John’s Wood. Jill studied textile and then graphic design at the Central School of Art and Design in London. In January 1972, whilst on a two-week block course in photography, she had a lucky break when she was offered a job as in-house photographer for premier rock venue, The Rainbow Theatre. From then on, she took live shots and features for the music press of the day of the 1970’s and 80’s, including NME, Melody Maker, Sounds, Smash Hits and The Face. In the 1990s Jill became the main photographer for Oasis. Jill has won many awards for her music photography including The Jane Bown...

Museum quality fine art print of an alternative shot from the cover shoot for Aladdin Sane by David Bowie from the official Duffy Archive. This official Duffy Archive print is avail...

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 ...

11 x 14" vintage silver gelatin photograph of Conductor, Pianist & Composer Michael Tilson Thomas, and his partner/manager (now husband) Joshua Mark Robis...

Les Voiles H 35.5 in. x 27.5 in. W Edition 6 Unframed. Les Voiles Series Uwe Ommer wanted to try a series that revealed less of the body using different wet...

David Bowie With Lou Reed And Iggy Pop - Limited Edition Mick Rock Estate Print David Bowie, Lou Reed & Iggy Pop during a press conference at the Dorchester Hotel...

© Michael Putland David Bowie David Bowie at his home Haddon Hall, Beckenham, Kent, UK 1972 David Bowie was a visionary British singer, songwriter, and actor known for his eclecti...

Silver and sepia tone photographic print of an indigenous spearfisher by Edward Sheriff Curtis, image circa 1901 (American, 1868-1952), as a 1974 copy of (and printed from negatives derived from) the original Edward Curtis copper gravure plate, by Jean-Antony du Lac (1929-2002). Curtis used a process he mastered of creating orotones, which are photographs on glass, which Jean-Anthony du Lac spent years mastering. Jean-Antony du Lac's work is considered that of a preservationist. Titled lower left, signed lower right. Presented in an aluminum frame with anti-glare glass. Paper size: 20"H x 15"W Born in France and raised in New York City, Jean-Anthony du Lac moved west to San Francisco in 1957. Jean was an accomplished photographer whose published credits include Life Magazine and the San Francisco Examiner. He spent many years reproducing Edward S. Curtis' images of North American Indians; and he mastered the process of creating orotones, which are photographic reproductions on glass. Jean's orotones appeared on the walls of the Smithsonian as well as the White House during the Carter and Reagan administrations. A preservationist, his reproduction of Edward Muybridge...

The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr at the President Hotel, Russell Square, London, 12 September 1963 by Norman Pa...

Painted Concrete - Large Scale Textural Photograph Detailed macro photo by Bill Clark (American, 20th Century). Clark has taken a photograph of concr...

Super Giant Oversize - C3PO Star Wars Archival Pigment Print 1977 by Geoff Wilkinson / Mirror Trinity Group Archive size : 71 x 45.5" inches / 180 x 116 cm paper size print type ...

Warhol superstars Joe Dallesandro and Sylvia Miles nude in Andy Warhol’s ‘Heat’, 1971, for After Dark magazine. This is an 8 x 10" vintage silver gelatin photograph that was publishe...

Poolside Backgammon 1972 by Slim Aarons Slim Aarons Limited Estate Edition Guests at the Villa Nirvana, owned by Oscar Obregon, in Las Brisas, Acapulco, Mexico, 1972 unframed c t...

Poolside Bar 1980 by Slim Aarons Slim Aarons Limited Estate Edition Guests seen from a poolside bar at the Hotel Il Pellicano in Porto Ercole, Italy, August 1980 unframed c type ...

JJ Holding Head as Hair Flies While Dancing with JudiJupiter Studio 54, NY, NY 1977 Signed, titled, dated, and numbered, verso Gelatin silver print 20 x 16 inches (Edition of 5 + ...

Terry O’Neill’s candid photojournalistic portraits of creative and political luminaries have included Brigitte Bardot, The Beatles, Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela, and Frank Sinatra,...

© Michael Putland Siouxsie Sioux Siouxsie Sioux, London 1980 Siouxsie Sioux is a pioneering English singer, songwriter, and frontwoman of Siouxsie and the Banshees, renowned for h...

11 x 14" vintage silver gelatin photograph of film director Alfred Hitchcock in New York, 1972 the year he released 'Frenzy'. Signed by Jack Mitchell on ...

16" x 20", signed limited edition print of David Bowie, titled "Starman" by Masayoshi Sukita. This print is also available as a 30x40" signed limited edition print. “It’s very ha...

Castro’s labor-intensive, photo-collage works of drug kingpins, smugglers, hitmen, countrymen, street vendors, soldiers, paramilitaries, kidnappers, and pimps pose showing with pride their erect penises to the voyeuristic viewer. They look back at us with a shameless stare. They play the game that moves between vanity and seduction. The root of these unique photographic works by the artist Celso Castro occurred when the artist returned from Italy to live back in Colombia in 1987. Castro wanted to produce from the photographs he took with his camera larger versions of those pieces, but having only registered his models with a single photograph it was impossible to achieve, given this need he adopts the language of fractionation completing the message he wants to transmit through his work. Castro perfected his technique throughout the years, now on he takes numbers of photographs of his subject, which are then assembled to conform a unique photo collage...

Slim Aarons Limited Estate Edition Countess on Deck Countess Gioia Gaetani-Lovatelli relaxes on deck during a yachting holiday in Porto Rotondo, 1982. Paper Size very large 72 x ...

HIROSHI SUGIMOTO (*1948, Japan) 267 Arcadia, Milan 1998 Gelatin silver print Image 119,4 x 149,2 cm (47 x 58 5/8 in.) Framed 152,4 x 182,2 x 7,6 cm (60 x 71 5/8 x 2 3/4 in.) Editi...

Poolside Catwalk 1970 by Slim Aarons Slim Aarons Limited Estate Edition Former fashion model Helen Dzo Dzo Kaptur (in white lace), Nelda Linsk (in yellow), wife of art dealer Jose...

Beautiful black & white landscape photograph of forest trees and stream in the woods of Alaska, by Anchorage-based nature photographer George Provost (American, 20th Century). Hand signed and dated "George Provost 1989" lower right. Photograph is hand made from an 8x10 camera negative in a traditional "wet" darkroom, by the photographer. Mounted on white mat board. Unframed. Image size: 19"H x 15"W. Born in California, Provost grew up in the Bay Area. He has lived and worked in Alaska since 1987, specializing in large format, fine art, black and white photography. His work has been exhibited in over 60 exhibitions, received numerous awards, and is included in hundreds of collections, both public and private. George Provost was an Isle Royale...

This 1970 portrait photograph, captured by society photographer Slim Aarons, features a group of colourfully dressed friends on board the Calypso clothing store owned boat, Bermuda. ...

Carol Beckwith, (American, b. 1945), Maasai Portrait Chromogenic print on paper, from Beckwith's book "Maasai" (1980), Hand signed in pencil, dated and titled with name of sitter ...

Pentti Sammallahti was born in 1950 in Helsinki, Finland. Sammallahti was surrounded by works from his grandmother, Hildur Larsson, who was a photographer in the early 1900s. Sammallahti has been photographing the world around him with a poetic eye since the age of eleven. At the age of nine, he visited "The Family of Man...

Unknown, Bob Marley In Concert, 1981 Image size: 38 x 50 cm Paper size: 48 x 60 cm Semi Gloss 250gsm conservation digital paper. This paper is especially suited to photographic i...

Allan Tannenbaum "John and Yoko Kimonos Bed Laugh, NYC, 1980" Inkjet print Paper size: 13 x 19 Inches Image Size: 8.5 x 12 7/8 Edition Number: From the s...

Catch Up By The Pool 1970 by Slim Aarons Slim Aarons Limited Estate Edition Former fashion model Helen Dzo Dzo Kaptur (in white lace), Nelda Linsk (in yellow), wife of art dealer ...

This stunning black and white photograph by renowned photographer Myron Wood captures the iconic mobile by Alexander Calder at Georgia O'Keeffe's Abiquiu home in April 1980. The imag...

JIMI HENDRIX ON STAGE AT THE WINTERLAND BALLROOM IN SAN FRANCISCO, FEBRUARY 1968. One copy available Signed limited edition #7/150 Rare signed platinum print with deckled bottom edge

Total Edition of 15 signed and numbered Also available in: 90 x 120 cm / 35.4 x 47.2 in 120 x 160 cm / 47.2 x 63 in Portrait of foot soles. Thierry Le Gou...

The subject, a nude, is shot from the female gaze. As a woman artist Roberta Fineberg enjoys working with life models for both her art and photography. The title of the photograph, Triggered, references both the cable release used to release the shutter of the camera to make the image and the volatility of human moods and emotions. Triggered, 1994 by Roberta Fineberg is 14" x 11" a gelatin silver print in an edition of 5 with 2 artist's proofs. Signed, dated, titled by the artist. Available: 3/5 Provenance: RF Studio *** Artist's Bio: As a visual artist, Roberta Fineberg (RF) focuses on the themes of serendipity, inventiveness, and the development of ideas for her photography, video, installations, works on paper, and painting. Drawn to experimentation, she explores diverse mediums and concepts such as the ephemeral (Butterfly Series), stolen moments (documentary photography), play, timelessness, the enduring, and the significance of matter. RF, living in New York City, began her career as an editorial photographer while studying in Paris. In France she contributed both photography and writing to publications, landing a column (photos and text) with The Saturday Review while exhibiting photographs in public spaces. Roberta Fineberg’s freelance photography appeared in Le Monde, Jeune Afrique, Paris Match, L’Officiel Femme, Ms, Weltwoche, Vanguardia, among others with images licensed through stock agencies. Photographs were selected for cover art at W.W. Norton, St. Martin’s Press, Harcourt, Bookspan, Simon & Schuster, etc. Print Regional Design Annual New York (2003) awarded her for book jacket photography for If Wishes Were Horses. In 1997 Macmillan published City Riders: A Story of Riding and Friendship her first book of black-and-white photographs and a story about three teenage girls in the 1990s who rode horses at the now-defunct Claremont Riding Academy and oldest stable in New York City. In 2023, RF created an interactive installation, works on paper on the female body, in a public space. In July 2022, Fineberg’s Double Helix was included in a Sotheby’s auction in New York City and exhibited in the preview show Contemporary Discoveries. Selected exhibitions include Time Gallery New York (2022), Phyllis Harriman Gallery New York studio shows (2020, 2022), CADAF online art fair (2020), Gallery122 New York pop-up group...

Palm Springs Palm Trees (Californication) - 2023 50x49cm. Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist I...

Scorpion (Stranger than Paradise) - 1998 43x59cm, sold out Edition of 5, Artist Proof 2/3. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and C...

Il Canille 1980 by Slim Aarons Slim Aarons Limited Estate Edition Sunbathers lounge on the white-painted terrace of Il Canille, built into the rocks of Pizzolungo overlooking the ...

Roca Lisa 1978 by Slim Aarons Slim Aarons Limited Estate Edition Fosca, Vera and Fiona Bertran holidaying in Roca Llisa, on the island of Ibiza, Spain 1978. unframed c type print...

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...

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