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Orientation: Horizontal
Gary Clark Jr Live album cover
Located in Austin, TX
Gary Clark Jr taken on stage during his ACL appearance in his hometown of Austin Texas, October 2012. This image, taken by Gary Clark Jr's old school friend, Ben Sklar, was used as t...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Photorealist Black and White Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Ellen Von Unwerth Birthday Party - 21st Century, Photography, Contemporary
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Ellen Von Unwerth Birthday Party - 2015 Archival C-Print, Edition of 10, 20x30cm Signature label and Certificate. Not mounted. About Tao Ruspoli (born 7 November 1975) is an Italian-American filmmaker, photographer, and musician. Background He is the second son of occasional actor and aristocrat Prince Alessandro Ruspoli, 9th Prince of Cerveteri by Austrian-American actress Debra Berger. Tao was born in Bangkok, Thailand and raised in Rome and Los Angeles. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy. Career Moviemaker magazine singled out Ruspoli as one of the 10 Young Filmmakers To Watch in its spring 2008 issue. His feature narrative debut, Fix, was one of 10 feature films to screen in competition at the 2008 Slamdance Film Festival and soon afterward at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival where Ruspoli was awarded the Heineken Red Star Award for "most innovative and progressive filmmaker." Fix also won the Festival Award for Best Film at the 2008 Brooklyn Film Festival, Vail Film Festival and the 2008 Twin Rivers Media Festival, as well as other prizes at several international festivals. His most well-known documentary is Just Say Know, a personal discussion of his family's drug addiction. His other films include Flamenco: A Personal Journey, a feature length documentary about the flamenco way of life as it is lived by Gypsies in the south of Spain. He has directed a number of other short documentaries, including El Cable (also about Flamenco), and This Film Needs No Title: A Portrait of Raymond Smullyan (a portrait of the renowned logician, mathematician and concert pianist Raymond Smullyan). Tao founded LAFCO in 2000. The Los Angeles Filmmakers Cooperative, is a bohemian collective of filmmakers and musicians who work out of a converted school bus. Through LAFCO, Tao has produced several films and helped dozens of filmmakers to make their first films and discover the wonders of digital media. His producing credits include the feature film Camjackers, which he also acted in and co-edited. Camjackers won the best editing award at the 44th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Tao is an accomplished flamenco guitar...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color

Heather’s Dream (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Heather’s Dream (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 50x60, Edition of 5 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Artist...
Category

2010s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Flammulated Owl
Located in Sante Fe, NM
From the start, there was something immensely challenging and inspiring about working with animals. Up to that point, I had spent my career photographing subjects I largely controlle...
Category

2010s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Perry Como Shaving Comical Portrait
Located in Austin, TX
This quirky portrait features musician Perry Como receiving a "fresh shave", surrounded by friends and a puppet. Perry Como was an American singer, actor and television personality....
Category

1950s Contemporary Black and White Photography

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Archival Pigment

Feeling Blue (Genuine, Expressions, Color, Emotion)
Located in Kansas City, MO
David Pugh Feeling Blue (Genuine, Expressions, Color, Emotion) Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta, 100% Cotton Fibre, 315 gsm, Acid and Lignin free, ISO 9706 confo...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, Archival Pigment

Running rings around the moon (Heavenly Falls) - Polaroid, Contemporary
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Running rings around the moon (Heavenly Falls) - 2016 50x60cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist inventory number: 19563...
Category

2010s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, Archival Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Audrey Hepburn in Pool, 1966 by Terry O'Neill
Located in Chicago, IL
Audrey Hepburn having a swim during a break from filming Stanley Donen’s 1967 work ‘Two for the Road’ in St Tropez. Limited edition silver gelatin print Paper size: 16 H x 20 W inc...
Category

1960s Contemporary Black and White Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Namaste, Poovar, Kerala
Located in Cambridge, GB
Namaste, portraits from the streets of India. This artwork is a limited edition of 25, gloss photographic print. It is accompanied by a signed and numbered certificate of authentici...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin

Historical Photo - Royal Family of England - Vintage Photo - 1940s
Located in Roma, IT
A rare photo of the Royal Family of England in 1940s, with George VI, Queen Mary, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Early George Bowes-Lyon, a young Queen Elizab...
Category

1940s Modern Figurative Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Dominique and Felix - Contemporary, 21st Century, Polaroid, Figurative
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Dominique and Felix (Stranger than Paradise) - 1997 38x48cm, Edition of 30, Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid Not mounted, Signature label and Certificate, artist Inventory N...
Category

1990s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Polaroid

Cheetah Who Shops from the Getty Archive
Located in Brighton, GB
Please bear in mind that all prints are produced to order. Lead times are expected between 15-20 days. "Cheetah Who Shops" is a stylish black-and-wh...
Category

20th Century Modern Black and White Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, Black and White

Jerry Hall Dive (Diptych)
Located in New York, NY
Norman Parkinson Jerry Hall , 1976 C print 40 x 30 inches each Estate stamped and numbered edition of 21 on verso American model Jerry Hall wearing a swimsuit by Martil and lipstick...
Category

1980s Modern Color Photography

Materials

C Print

"Saturday Night Fever" Original Vintage 1977 Movie Film Cinema Lobby Card
Located in London, GB
"Saturday Night Fever" Original Vintage 1977 Lobby Card Condition Mint Original vintage 1977 lobby card from the film "Saturday Night Fever" directed by John Badham FRAMING: Pleas...
Category

1970s Modern Portrait Photography

Materials

Paper, Color

Le Plan Orsec - Vintage Photograph - 1960
Located in Roma, IT
Le Plan Orsec is a black and white vintage photo, realized in November 15th 1960. The photo depicts a general overwiew of the disaster in Bonneuil, near Paris, and the use of Civil ...
Category

1960s Contemporary Figurative Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Drinks at Gstaad, Estate Edition
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Models from Parisian jeweller M. Gerard enjoying drinks on the terrace of The Palace Hotel in Gstaad, Switzerland, 1984. Slim Aarons Estate Edition, Certificate of Authenticity inc...
Category

1980s Realist Portrait Photography

Materials

Lambda

A Wish (Circle of Magic) from the 29 Palms, CA project - based on a Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
A Wish (Circle of Magic) from the 29 Palms, CA project - 2009 57x70cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. digital C-Print based on a Polaroid Certificate and signature label. Art...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

C Print, Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Color, Polaroid

The Drugs Offered by VEB - Vintage Photograph - 1980s
Located in Roma, IT
The drugs offered by VEB is an original black and white photograph realized by an anonymous photographer With the note in five languages on the rear. Good conditions. 200 differe...
Category

1980s Modern Black and White Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Afternoon Daze (Till Death do us Part) - Polaroid, Figurative, Woman
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Afternoon Daze (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 38x36cm each, 38x120 installed, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. 3 Digital C-Prints, based on 3 Polaroids. Signature label and Ce...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Springtime (Suburbia) - Contemporary, Polaroid, Analog, Photography
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Springtime (Suburbia) - 2004 50x60cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid, Signed on verso with Certificate, Artist inventory number: 18251. Not mounted. Thi...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

The Rolling Stones "Swarkestone Contact Sheet" Beggars Banquet
Located in Austin, TX
“Swarkestone Contact Sheet” by Michael Joesph from the famous photo shoot of The Rolling Stones for their Beggars Banquet album at Sarum Chase mansion, Hampstead, London, 1968. Featu...
Category

1960s Photorealist Black and White Photography

Materials

C Print

Silence and their words (Till Death do us Part) - Polaroid, Contemporary
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Silence and their words (Till Death do us Part) - 2007 20x24cm, Edition of 10, digital C-Print print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 8...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Leaving (Sidewinder) - Polaroid, 21st Century, Contemporary
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Leaving II (Sidewinder) - 2005 60x110cm, Edition of 10. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 3436. Not mounted. 2005 SIDEWINDER - Director / Artist / Camera / Editing - starring JD Rudometkin, Stefanie Schneider, music by JD Rudometkin private history turned into an intimate mythology of elemental fantasies where reality is perceived through a veil of psychedelic memories and unconscious projections. such is a collection of passions and dreams, an uncanny diary of ephemeral narratives and mental intensities in Stefanie Schneider’s painterly photographs where subjectivity of an ontological doubt uses a poetics of pastische as a vehicle for an intertextual journey towards the truth and the authenticity of primary emotions. here time is immersed in a nostalgic suspense of oneiric dimension, a sort of ambiguous coma of silence and comfort, and open space embraces a psychotic landscape of solitude and accidental pleasure. fetishisized surface of extreme feelings gives a stage for an unsolicited promise of unconditional love and unlimited freedom, a promise framed by sensual tension between fulfillment and expectation. (Adam Budak, Kunsthaus Graz, Oct 2005) Sidewinder There’s blood on the dress that hangs in the Airstream trailer outside 29 palms. With the pistol in her sweat palm touching at his temple. Tell me what god’s gonna do for me and you now Stevie’s saying while Brother John Baptiste looks there across to where her cat seems weak and fed. All the good that comes to me from my believing man, I wanna hear about it said to me like that. Just the way you breathed it like you did 10 minutes ago when I was wrapped so well around your head. Silence then. A baby screams his mother out in the dessert night who wakes so late. Orion is a belt John Baptiste looks at through the torn-screen trailer window. There, touching his calf are vipers crawling now across her feet between his knees in front of her he kneeling for his life and they are full of venom with their broken fangs. A gun at head, where even his breath, so short, is preaching. He’s in a wheat field. John Baptiste. Counting birds on telephone wires hung low in afternoon where his mother’s call cannot now reach him. There she stands a weeping willow with the sidewinder underneath the trailer step a drop of blood upon her ankle with the bullet through its head. A scar follows sweat palm to wrist. Torn Stevie. Scars from the weapon to her toes an accidental act of God her father said. On Vaness at California 16 years ago but who’s counting 6 bullets for the barrel wait beside the temple. The long white shaft of tissue hemmed together gods tattoo along her ribs, hip to breast. She wants to fuck the preacher in her trailer with his bible on the alter front row Stevie asks forgiveness holy father from the car that shook her bones apart. John Baptiste asks to pray before she leads his temple head...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Markus Klinko - Smoking (Black & White), Photography 2001, Printed After
Located in Greenwich, CT
"Markus Klinko is an award-winning, international fashion/celebrity photographer and director, who has worked with many of today's most iconic stars of film, music, and fashion. Kli...
Category

Early 2000s Black and White Photography

Materials

Digital, Archival Pigment

Jeff Buckley - Oversize Signed Limited Edition Print
Located in London, GB
Jeff Buckley - Oversize Signed Limited Edition Print American guitarist and songwriter Jeff Buckley (1966-1997), photographed during press for his first ...
Category

2010s Modern Portrait Photography

Materials

Black and White, Archival Pigment

Blue Cadillac Antonia, Balearic Islands, contemporary, photography
Located in München, BY
Edition of 10 A female model is sitting in the front of an old classic Cadillac. Fashion and fine art embrace each other in the photography of Jacques Olivar (b. 1941), where the m...
Category

2010s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Four Sisters and a Brother - diptych - Contemporary, Polaroid, Childhood
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Four Sisters and a Brother - diptych - 2020 - 25x65cm, Edition of 7, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Photograph printed in Canson Barita Fiber Rag 340gr, based ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Color, Archival Pigment, Polaroid

Mercury And May - Limited Edition Mick Rock Estate Print
Located in London, GB
Mercury And May - Limited Edition Mick Rock Estate Print Freddie Mercury and Brian May in a recording studio, 1974 (photo Mick Rock). All prints are numbe...
Category

1970s Modern Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

The Games we played (Till Death do us Part) - Contemporary, Polaroid, Women
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
The Games we played (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 40x50cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 artist proofs. Archival C-Print print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label, art...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Felix and Dominique (California Blue Screen) - analog, mounted
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Felix and Dominique (California Blue Screen) - 1997 44x59cm, sold out Edition of 5, Artist Proof 1/2, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid, Mounted o...
Category

1990s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

Metal

Fuscae I & II, Diptych. Portrait intervened by the artists
Located in Miami Beach, FL
Fuscae I & II 2019, by Hunter & Gatti Acrylic And Oil Pastel On Pigment Print Overall size: : 43 cm. H x 66 cm. W Individual size: 43 cm. H x 33 cm. W Unique Unframed This piece is ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

Acrylic, Black and White, Archival Pigment

I am leaving! (Till Death do us Part) - Polaroid, Contemporary
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
I am leaving! (Till Death do us Part) - 2007 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label....
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Reno, Nevada, 1960 (Misfits Group Photograph) - Elliott Erwitt
Located in London, GB
Reno, Nevada, 1960 (Misfits Group Photograph) - Elliott Erwitt Signed, inscribed with title and dated on accompanying artist’s label Silver gelatin print, printed later Available in...
Category

20th Century Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Dahlia #4 - Philip Gatward, Contemporary Photography, Spring, Pink Flowers
Located in Brighton, GB
Please bear in mind that all prints are produced to order. Lead times are expected between 15-20 days. Dahlia #4 is a gorgeous Archival Inkjet Print by contemporary photographer Philip Gatward...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Still-life Photography

Materials

Archival Ink, Inkjet, Color

Galaxy Craze (California Blue Screen) - analog
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Galaxy Craze (California Blue Screen) Edition of 5, 44x59 cm, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory N...
Category

1990s Outsider Art Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Pavillion Blur - Getty Archive, 20th Century Photography, Brighton, Dancing
Located in Brighton, GB
Taken from the world’s largest photographic archive, (Hulton Archive and Getty Images), the Getty Images Gallery collection features an extraordinary time capsule of the last century...
Category

20th Century Modern Black and White Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, Black and White

The Beatles In White "Yesterday and Today" album cover shot by Robert Whitaker
Located in Austin, TX
The Beatles In White by Robert Whitaker. On March 25, 1966, The Beatles visited 1 The Vale, Chelsea, London, a top-floor studio leased by Oluf Nilssen and frequently used by renowned photographer Robert Whitaker. Before the photo session with Robert Whitaker, The Beatles posed for a more conventional session at the studio with Nigel Dickson of The Beatles Book...
Category

Late 20th Century Photorealist Portrait Photography

Materials

C Print

"Eddie Van Halen Wall Jump" photograph by Neal Preston from Hard Rock Hotel
Located in Boca Raton, FL
"Eddie Van Halen Wall Jump" photograph by Neal Preston. Photo by Neal Preston hand written on front lower right corner. This framed photograph was prev...
Category

20th Century Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Winter
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Winter - 2001, 20x29cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the 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...
Category

1990s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

California Blue Screen - 100x136cm - Polaroid, Contemporary, Self-Portrait
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
California Blue Screen (Stranger than Paradise) - 1997 100x136cm, Edition of 1/3. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signed on verso with Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 1...
Category

1990s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

Metal

'Penelope' from the movie Immaculate Springs - starring Jacinda Barrett
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
'Penelope' from the movie Immaculate Springs - 1998 Edition of 10, 20x30cm, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artis...
Category

1990s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Markus Klinko - Kelis, Milkshake, Photography 2002, Printed After
Located in Greenwich, CT
"Markus Klinko is an award-winning, international fashion/celebrity photographer and director, who has worked with many of today's most iconic stars of film, music, and fashion. Kli...
Category

Early 2000s Color Photography

Materials

Digital, Archival Pigment

Cary Grant, Jane Wyman, and William Holden
Located in Austin, TX
Black and white candid portrait of Cary Grant, Jane Wyman, and William Holden sitting at the table, 1951. Cary Grant was an English-American actor. Known for his mid-Atlantic acce...
Category

1950s Contemporary Black and White Photography

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Digital, Archival Pigment

Playing (Suburbia) - Contemporary, Polaroid, Photography
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Playing (Suburbia) - 2004 20x24cm, Edition of 10, digital C-Print based on a Polaroid, Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 1665. Not mounted, This project "Su...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Jane Russell in Crowd
Located in Austin, TX
This black and white candid capture features a radiant Jane Russell stands out from the crowd while arriving for an event in Hollywood, California, circa 1958. Jane Russell was an ...
Category

1950s Contemporary Black and White Photography

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Digital, Archival Pigment

"Stevie Nicks" framed photograph by Neal Preston from Hard Rock Hotel and Casino
Located in Boca Raton, FL
"Stevie Nicks" framed photograph by Neal Preston. Image size: 33 1/4 x 53 1/4. "Stevie Nicks" hand written in front lower left corner. "Photo by Neal Preston" hand written in front l...
Category

20th Century Contemporary Figurative Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Belles of Shoreditch, The Whoopee Club, London - Burlesque Color Photography
Located in Cambridge, GB
Belles of Shoreditch, from Richard Heeps Burlesque series. Richard Heeps became well-known for his Burlesque Photography after he spent 2003 ca...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin

Selfie @ Altitude - Belgium 2017 - Limited Edition # 1/5 Fine Art Photography
Located in Brussels, BE
This is # 1/5 Fine Art Print Limited Edition 70 cm x 100 cm VADOR THE SPACE SHOW is the first exhibition of photographs by Stefan Darte which is currently...
Category

2010s Contemporary Black and White Photography

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Black and White, Archival Pigment

Felix with Knife (California Blue Screen) - analog
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Felix with Knife (California Blue Screen) - 1997 Edition 1/3, 114x142cm, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label. Artist I...
Category

1990s Outsider Art Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Devil in Disguise (From the series Odd Stories]
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Devil in Disguise, 2012 [From the series Odd Stories] digital print based on a Polaroid mounted on Dibond - matte coating Hand signed & numbered by artist edition 2014, this is no 1 ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Einsam (Stage of Consciousness) - 21st Century, Polaroid, Figurative, mounted
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Einsam (Stage of Consciousness) -2007 20x24cm, Edition of 10, Digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Artist Inventory # 8334. Signature label and certificate. Mounted on Dibond with...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

The Golddiggers of 1933
Located in Austin, TX
Scene from Gold Diggers of 1933, a grand Busby Berkley musical. This is a master print from the original large-format camera negative. Gold Diggers of 1933 is a pre-Code Warner Bros...
Category

1930s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Archival Pigment

David Bowie by Denis O'Regan signed artist proof print
Located in Austin, TX
David Bowie in Vancouver, Canada in 1983 by acclaimed photographer Denis O'Regan, who was at the time, the official photographer on Bowie's "Serious Moonlight" world tour Signed 16x20" artist proof...
Category

Late 20th Century Black and White Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Marilyn Monroe Studio Shoot, 1950s, 20, 2 x 25 cm
Located in Cologne, DE
Norma Jeane Mortenson or better known as Marilyn Monroe – iconic, beautiful and maybe the most known Hollywood Stars of the 20th century. Born and raised in Los Angeles, USA, she spe...
Category

1950s Modern Black and White Photography

Materials

Black and White

Where Are We Heading? (Olivia Wilde)
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
'Where Are We Heading? (Olivia Wilde)' Edition 2/10, 20x30cm, 2008, printed on Velvet Watercolor, 310gsm, Bright White, Acid Free, Signature label and Cer...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Color, Archival Pigment

Dingle, Co. Kerry, Ireland, 1978
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Pentti Sammallahti is a benchmark figure in contemporary Finnish photography. His works depict nature eroded and broken down by civilization, but he does not put man and the environm...
Category

1970s Contemporary Black and White Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

3 Palm Trees (Stranger than Paradise) - analog, mounted, 114x142cm
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
3 Palm Trees (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 Edition 2/3, 114x142cm. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid. Mounted on Aluminum with matte UV-Protection....
Category

1990s Outsider Art Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Untitled - Fairytales, analog
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
'Untitled' (Fairytales) - 2006, 48x59cm, Edition 2/5, analog C-Print, hand-Printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, matte finish, based on a Polaroid, Certificate and ...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

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