Polaroid Portrait Photography

Jaunty (Beachshoot) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #1401. Not m...

Ellen VON UNWERTH (*1954, Germany) Steamy, New Orleans, 1998 Unique Polaroid 10.8 x 8.5 cm (4 1/4 x 3 3/8 in.) Biography: Born in Germany in 1954, Ellen von Unwerth is widely regard...

The Games we played (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist...

Sunset (Oxana’s 30th Birthday) - 2007 featuring Radha Mitchell including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 196 pages, hardcover, published by Snap ...

A Vision you can't Capture (29 Palms, CA) - 2008 including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 196 pages, hardcover, published by Snap Collective, 20...

For Your Eyes Only (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005, 38x37cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist ...

Fernweh - 2017 50x50cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid. Signature label with certificate. Artist inventory PL2017-108. Not m...

The Bird Man (Haley and the Birds) - 2013 50x49cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventor...

Red Roses (Oxana's 30th Birthday) - 2007 from the 29 Palms, CA project 24x29cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label with ...

'There is no Forever' (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 40x48cm, Edition of 10. Archival C-Print print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. ...

Untitled - 2014, 20x24cm, Edition of 1/10. Digital C-Print based a Polaroid Collage. Hand-signed and numbered by the artist on the back with Certifi...

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

Battlefield (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 44x59cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Invent...

Toast is Ready (Cyndi Lauper) from the 'Bring Ya to the Brink' record Album) 2009 - 40x48cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid....

The Preparation (Heather's Dream) - 2013 part of "The Girl Behind the White Picket Fence" starring Udo Kier 38x48cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based ...

Don't give up on us, Baby (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature...

Frozen XII (Stranger than Paradise) - 2001 50x49cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Invent...

A widow bird sate mourning for her love (Heather's Dream) - 2013 part of "The Girl Behind the White Picket Fence" featuring Udo Kier and Heather Megan Christie 38x48cm, Edition of ...

Last Season I - so I walked away from my Valley (Wastelands), diptych - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist...

Birgit and Paul, 1996 Edition 1/10, 25.5x20cm including the white frame, image size 23x15cm. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the Artist. Certificate and Signature label. Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider's early woman portraits and nudes. 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...

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

Time Out (Haley and the Birds) - 2013 40x39cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #1...

You don't love me! (Till Death do us Part) - 2008 - 20x24cm, Edition of 10, digital C-Print print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label, artist Inventory No. 859...

Wonder Valley (Sidewinder) - 2005 20x57cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival Print based on the Super-8 footage. Certificate and signature label. Artist Inventory No ...

Deserted (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 40x48cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist Inventory ...

Flying (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 part of the 29 Palms, CA project. 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #7870. Not mounted. LIFE’S A DREAM (The Personal World of Stefanie Schneider) 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...

You're not taking care of me! (Till Death do us Part) - 2008 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signa...

There is no Solution (Till Death do us Part) - 2008 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature labe...

Feathered (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 20x24cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print print, based on the original Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate Ar...

Hidden (The last Picture Show) - 1999 50x49cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist In...

'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman' part of the series 'A Girl Called N.' - 2019 40x48cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid. Signatu...

Wild Boy (Stranger than Paradise) - 1997 20x25cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist Inventory ...

I love you (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. 8661, not ...

Seagulls (Zuma Beach) - 1999 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artists Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artist Inventory # 198. Not mou...

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

Randy and I (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 1170. Signature label and Cer...

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

The Pink Dress (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 40x48cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist Inve...

Caitlin in pink Tennis Skirt (Back in the 80's) - 2016 - 50x50cm, Edition 2/10, digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label, ...

Dreamgirl (Chicks and Chicks and Sometimes Cocks) - 2019 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. A...

Last Season II - so I walked away from my Valley (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist invento...

Blue Mountains (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 1160. Signature label and Certificate. Not mounted. For sale is a piece from the Wastelands series. Published in: WASTELANDS, published by edition braus, Wachter Verlag, Heidelberg, 2006 (monograph) Exhibited: Wastelands, Städtische Galerie, Waldkraiburg, Germany (S) (2006) / Wastelands, Zephyr, Mannheim, Germany (S) (catalog) (2006) Wastelands, Kunstverein Recklinghausen, Germany (S) (2007), Stranger Than Paradise, Scott White Contemporary, San Diego, (S) (2012) Reality with the Tequila: Stefanie Schneider’s Fertile Wasteland by James Scarborough “How much more than enough for you for I for both of us darling?” (E. E. Cummings) Until he met her, his destiny was his own. Petty and inconsequential but still his own. He was cocksure and free, young and unaccountable, with dark hair and aquiline features. His expression was always pensive, a little troubled, but not of a maniacal sort. He was more bored than anything else. With a heart capable of violence. Until she met him, she was pretty but unappreciated. Her soul had registered no seismic activity. Dust bowl weary, she’d yet to see better days. A languorous body, a sweet face with eyes that could be kind if so inclined. Until she met him, she had not been inclined. It began when he met her. She was struck in an instant by his ennui. The sum of their meeting was greater than the imbroglios and chicaneries of their respective existences. He was struck by the blank slate look in her eyes. They walked, detached and focused on the immediate, obscenely unaware of pending change across a terrain of mountainous desert, their eyes downcast and world-weary, unable to account for the buoyant feeling in her heart. His hard-guy shtick went from potentiality to ruse. The gun was not a weapon but a prop, a way to pass time. Neither saw the dark clouds massing on the horizon. They found themselves alone in the expanses of time, unaware of the calamity that percolated even as they posed like school kids...

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

Breaking the Waves (Zuma Beach) - 1999 20x25cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artists Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artist Inventory #110....

Seagull (Zuma Beach) - 1999 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artists Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artist Inventory # 520. Not moun...

Highway One (Zuma Beach) - 1999 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artists Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artist Inventory # 201. Not ...

Dust Bowl Weary (Wastelands) - 2003 Edition of 10, 38x37cm, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No 1185.01 Not mounted. Off...

Love (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 part of the 29 Palms, CA project. Featuring Udo Kier and Radha Mitchell 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based...

Reinventing oneself, I - 2019, 20x20cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid. Signature label with certificate. Artist inventory ...

Palm Trees Dive by (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 44x59cm, Edition 2/10. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. A...

Play among the Stars (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 80x30cm including white frame, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certific...

The Letter (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 50x49cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist...

Play among the Stars (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature labe...

The Letter (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 8846. Not mounted. MARGARITA (OFF) "I must go. I can feel his breath on the trail el Diablo...

Above Water (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signa...

Cleaning-up (Oxana's 30th Birthday) - 2007, from the 29 Palms, CA project - Edition of 5 plus 2 Artist Proofs, 30x40cm each, 30x180cm installed with gaps, 4 analog C-Prints, base...

Gravity (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 80x80cm, Edition 2/5. Analog C-Print printed on Fuji Archive Paper, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Mou...

Untitled (9/11) - 2001 Edition of 5, 38x37cm. Archival C-Print, on Archive Fuji Chrystal Paper, based on the Polaroid. Artist inventory number: 1542. Signature label and certifi...

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

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