Polaroid Portrait Photography

Waiting (Sidewinder) - 2005 98x97cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No....

In this box scented with wild Strawberry flavour I hand folded my Strawberry story into an exclusive leporello This is number 2/3 Digital color print based on a series of original Polaroids
on beautiful PHOTO RAG ULTRA SMOOTH 305gsm - 100% cotton by HAHNEMÜHLE Signed and numbered. 156cm x 15cm The leporello is comfortably wrapped in a latex sheet rubbed with freshly picked strawberries and sprinkled with home made golden shower...

Escapism - 2020 20x20cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs, digital C-Print based on the Polaroid. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2020-922. Not mounte...

Memory Lane (Haley and the Birds) - 29 Palms, CA - 2013 78x76cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. ...

The Decision - The Getaway (The Last Picture Show) - 1999 50x50cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Artist Inventory #762. Signature label and Certificate. Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider's photographs evoke scintillating moments suspended between daydreams and waking reality. Each scene, captured in the southwestern United States, radiates a surreal enchantment. The artist's role appears minimal yet pivotal, providing the decisive impulse that sets the imagery into motion. The figures in her photographs remain as elusive as the motivations behind their actions, and the narratives woven through her sequences are tantalizingly open to interpretation. Atmospheric disturbances in Schneider's work emerge as the result of a deliberate narrative arrangement, compelling viewers to navigate between visual mementos and the gaps in memory they conjure. Yet, her artistry is no less purposeful in its engagement with medium. Despite the inherent unpredictability of expired Polaroid film, Schneider wields it with calculated intent. The photo-chemical self-developing process, altered by age and decay, transforms the initial exposure into something alien yet mesmerizing. This dysfunction is a cornerstone of MIND SCREEN, a multi-part work that explores the fragility of reality, authenticity, and comprehension. Schneider juxtaposes this brittleness with a magical realism steeped in chimeras, crafting dreamlike sequences that resist definitive narratives. She entrusts viewers with the responsibility of piecing together presumed storylines, refusing to offer a manual for interpretation. Instead, her work draws us into a realm where the unreal reigns—shimmering scenes that evoke the mirage of a road movie, a moment of violence, or a tragic self-sacrifice. Film genres are invoked and subverted in a single breath: Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders is reimagined through a rose-tinted lens, Thelma...

Untitled (Cowboys and Angels)- 2005 Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs - 100x60cm. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 1...

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...

Renée's Dream - The Boys (Days of Heaven). Part of the 29 Palms, CA project. - 2006, 20x24cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signatu...

From the Hip, 2020 50x50cm, Edition 1/7 plus 2 Artist Proofs, digital C-Print based on a Polaroid, not mounted. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory - PL2020...

Primary Colors (Stranger than Paradise) - 2001 Edition 1/5, 9 pieces, each 48x47cm, installed 159x156cm including 5 cm gap in between each piece. 9 Analog C-Prints, hand-printed by...

Memories of Love II (The Girl Behind the White Picket Fence), 2013 including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 192 pages, hardcover, published by S...

'Gelsomina II' "Bring Ya to the Brink" (Cyndi Lauper record Album) - 2016 70x90cm, sold out Edition of 3, Artist Proof 1/3, Analog C-Print, hand-printed and enlarged by the artist...

Radha Mind Screen (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 128x125cm, Edition 5/5, Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper Based on the Polaroid, Certificate and Si...

Daisy and Austen in front of Trailer (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 Proof b4 Printing / 128x125cm signed, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid, signed on...

Hillview Motel (Stranger than Paradise) - triptych, 2003 Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. 20x66cm installed, 20x20cm each. 3 archival C-Prints, based on the 3 original Polar...

Zipper (Back in the 80's) - 1999 48x46cm, Edition of 10. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #355. Not mounted. Stefan...

Upside down (boy you turn me) 2019, 50x50cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid, not mounted. Signed on the back and with certificate. A...

Stefanie Schneider Polaroid sized unlimited Mini 'Beachshoot' - 1999 signed in front, not mounted. 1 Digital Color Photograph based on a...

Rodeo Grounds (Till Death do us Part) - 2010, diptych Edition 1/5. 128x150cm and 128x126cm together 126x286cm including a 10 cm space in between both pieces, Analog C-Print print,...

After All (Cyndi Lauper) from the 'Bring Ya to the Brink' Cyndi Lauper record Album) - 2009 48x46cm, Edition of 5, plus 2 Artists Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid....

Hillview Motel (Stranger than Paradise) - triptych, 2003 Edition 6/10, 183x56cm installed, 58x56cm each, 3 analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist, based on the 3 original Pol...

'Radha Leopard Dress III' (29 Palms, CA) Edition 3/10, 20x20cm, 1999, digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist inventory 18258.03. Not mounted. Featuring Australian actress Radha Mitchell. Living and working in Los Angeles and Berlin, Stefanie Schneider's scintillating situations take place in the American West. Situated on the verge of an elusive super-reality, her photographic sequences provide the ambience for loosely woven story lines and a cast of phantasmic characters. Schneider works with the chemical mutations of expired Polaroid film stock. Chemical explosions of color spreading across the surfaces undermine the photograph's commitment to reality and induce her characters into trance-like dreamscapes. Like flickering sequences of old road movies Schneider's images seem to evaporate before conclusions can be made - their ephemeral reality manifesting in subtle gestures and mysterious motives. Schneider's images refuse to succumb to reality, they keep alive the confusions of dream, desire, fact, and fiction. Stefanie Schneider received her MFA in Communication Design at the Folkwang Schule Essen, Germany. Her work has been shown at the Museum for Photography, Braunschweig, Museum für Kommunikation, Berlin, the Institut für Neue Medien, Frankfurt, the Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden, Kunstverein Bielefeld, Museum für Moderne Kunst Passau, Les Rencontres d'Arles, Foto -Triennale Esslingen. “It was Stefanie Schneider, who inspired me to start the company THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT after seeing her work, which seems to achieve the possible from the impossible, creating the finest of art out of the most basic of mediums and materials. Indeed, after that one day, I was so impressed with her photography that I realized Polaroid film could not be allowed to disappear. Being at the precise moment in time where the world was about to lose Polaroid, I seized the moment and have put all my efforts and passion into saving Polaroid film. For that, I thank Stefanie Schneider almost exclusively, who played a bigger role than anyone in saving this American symbol of photography.” –Florian Kaps, March 8th 2010 (“Doc” Dr. Florian Kaps, founder of “The Impossible Project”) Selected Exhibitions 2019 Participating and curating the newly founded Polaroid Museum at the Bombay Beach Biennale 2019 (G) invited project at Saatchi's The Other Art Fair, LA - Polaroid Curation Instant Dreams USA film release March/April NYC, L.A. 2018 participating and curating Bombay Beach Biennale 2018 (G) Rough Play Project, Available for all, Joshua, Tree, USA (G) 2017 BLICKFELD] Analoge Fotografie, Kommunale Galerie Steglitz-Zehlendorf (G) (catalog) Kunstverein Bad Homburg Artlantis, Bad Homburg (G)

 2016 
Instantdreams, Instantdreams Gallery, Berlin 

(S) 2015
 Desert Voices, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) with Pamela Littky 
Blue Nudes, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) 

 2014

 Summer Show, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (G) 6 Finalists, Saatchi Gallery London (G) 
Instantdreams, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (S)
Grand Opening, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) with Banksy, Andy Warhol, Alison Bignon, Sophie Dickens, Victor Gingembre and others
 2013 
Heather's Dream, Short, nominated for the German Short Film Award 2013 (Deutscher Kurzfilmpreis)
Images For Images (Artists fir Tichy), GASK - Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region,  Kutná Hora, Czech Republic, (G) with Richard Prince, Nan Golding, Shirana Shahbazi, Sophie Calle, Martin Kippenberger, Arnulf Rainer, Thomas Ruff, Katharina Grosse, Jonathan Meese & others (catalog) 
The Girl behind the White Picket Fence, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (S)
 Heather's Dream, Short, German Competition Short Film Festival Oberhausen 
Multimedia Presentation with Artist Stefanie Schneider, Palms Springs Art Museum, Annenberg Theater
 The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, (G) with Ansel Adams, Bruce Charlesworth, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Charles and Ray Eames, Robert Mapplethorpe, Lisa Oppenheim, Andy Warhol and others, (catalog)
 Road Atlas - Straßenfotografie, DZ Bank Collection: Kunsthalle Erfurt (Spring), Art Foyer DZ Bank, Frankfurt/Main, (G) with Helen Levitt, Pieter Hugo, Nobuyoshi Araki, Pietro Donzelli, and others (catalog)  
2012
 Stranger Than Paradise, Christian Hohmenn Fine Art, Palms Desert, (S)
 Stefanie Schneider, Gallery at Cliff Lede Vineyards, Napa Valley, CA, (S)
 Bienale Art Auction 2012, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, (G), with Ai Weiwei, John Baldessari, Christo, Ed Ruscha, Christopher Russell... MUSES, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (G) 
Polaroid (IM)POSSIBLE - THE WESTLICHT COLLECTION, NRW Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft, Düsseldorf (G), (catalog)
 Road Atlas - Straßenfotografie, DZ Bank Collection: Kunstmuseum Dieselkraftwerk, Cottbus, (G), (catalog), 
Studio Scholorship, Centro Cultural Andratx, Mallorca, May 2012
 Selling Sex, ShowStudio Gallery, London (G) with Cortney Andrews, Una Burke, Liz Cohen, Inge Jacobsen, and others
 Stranger Than Paradise, Scott White Contemporary, San Diego, (S) 

2011 
Kunst zu verlosen !  // Art to raffle off !, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, (G) with Monica Bonvicini, Tim Eitel...

Reality (The Princess and her Lover) - 2007 part of the 29 Palms, CA project. Edition of 10, 20x24cm. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate...

Untitled (Beachshoot) - 2005 128x125cm, Edition 4/5. Analog C-Print, hand-Printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certifi...

Nastasia with Gun (High Desert) - 2019 Edition 1/10, 50x50cm, Digital C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider: A German...

Drive to Russian River (My own private travel Diary) - 1991 20x24cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate...

Heather’s Dream (The Girl Behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 125x156cm, Edition of 5 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. A...

Immaculate Springs Set with Jacinda Barrett - 1998 Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. 20x20cm, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artist i...

Untitled (Beachshoot) - 2005 50x50cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Mounted under Plexiglass (matte) with Aluminum backing. Signe...

Desert Center (Stranger than Paradise) - 2000 Edition of 10, 48x60cm. Archival Print, based on the Polaroid. Mounted on dibond with matte UV-Protection. Signature label and Cert...

Treasure II (Stage of Consciousness) 29 Palms, CA - 2007 75x93cm, Edition of 5. analog C-Print printed on Fuji Archive Paper, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. ...

First Steps (Heavenly Falls) 2016 50x48cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Lambda Print based on the Polaroid Certificate and signature label artist inventory number: 19665. ...

Many Fairytales (The Princess and her Lover) - 2007 Edition of 10, 20x20cm. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid, not mounted, Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory...

Untitled (Beachshoot) - 2005 128x125cm, Edition 4/5. Analog C-Print, hand-Printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certifi...

Reflection (Suburbia) - 2004 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid, Not mounted, Certificate and signature label. Artist Inventory No. 2765. This project...

Stranger than Paradise II, 2005, 57x56 cm, Edition 1/5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on a Polaroid, signed on Verso with Certific...

Male Nude (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition 7/10. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 2...

Fire - 2017, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs Archival Print, based on aPolaroid, not mounted. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2017-108. Kirsten Thys...

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...

Runaway Ride - The Getaway (The Last Picture Show) - 1999 40x40cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist Inventory #345. ...

'Long Way Home III' (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 128x125cm, Edition 1/10, analog C-Print, based on a Polaroid, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, Not mo...

Day and Night - 2017 Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. 48x46cm Archival C-print, based on a Polaroid. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2017-111. Not m...

Sleeping Beauties (Till Death do us Part) - 2005, 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Signature label and certificate....

Radha Shooting II (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 38x36cm, Edition of 30, digital C-Print based on a Polaroid, Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No 259.34. Not mo...

The Diva and the Boy (Beachshoot) - 2005 Edition of 10 plus 2 artist Proofs. 37x36cm each, installed 126x123cm. 9 archival C-Prints, based on the 9 Polaroids. Certificate and Sig...

Oui, mon Cul #11, 2015 [Les Foxy Femmes de Carmen De Vos] 30x25cm, edition of 7 Archival color print based on original Polaroid on beautiful PHOTO RAG ULTRA SMOOTH 305gsm - 100% cot...

Actor Girl II (Stage of Consciousness) - 2008 including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 192 pages, hardcover, published by Snap Collective, 2024....

Radha and Max on Dirt Road (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 Edition 8/10. 60x67cm including white frame. Analog C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist inv...

'Spare Parts' (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 Edition 3/5, 128x125 cm, Analog C-Print, based on a Polaroid, enlarged by the artist, Not mounted, Artist inventory 792.18 With Radha Mitchell and Max Sharam Living and working in Los Angeles and Berlin, Stefanie Schneider's scintillating situations take place in the American West. Situated on the verge of an elusive super-reality, her photographic sequences provide the ambience for loosely woven story lines and a cast of phantasmic characters. Schneider works with the chemical mutations of expired Polaroid film stock. Chemical explosions of color spreading across the surfaces undermine the photograph's commitment to reality and induce her characters into trance-like dreamscapes. Like flickering sequences of old road movies Schneider's images seem to evaporate before conclusions can be made - their ephemeral reality manifesting in subtle gestures and mysterious motives. Schneider's images refuse to succumb to reality, they keep alive the confusions of dream, desire, fact, and fiction. Stefanie Schneider received her MFA in Communication Design at the Folkwang Schule Essen, Germany. Her work has been shown at the Museum for Photography, Braunschweig, Museum für Kommunikation, Berlin, the Institut für Neue Medien, Frankfurt, the Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden, Kunstverein Bielefeld, Museum für Moderne Kunst Passau, Les Rencontres d'Arles, Foto -Triennale Esslingen. “It was Stefanie Schneider, who inspired me to start the company THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT after seeing her work, which seems to achieve the possible from the impossible, creating the finest of art out of the most basic of mediums and materials. Indeed, after that one day, I was so impressed with her photography that I realized Polaroid film could not be allowed to disappear. Being at the precise moment in time where the world was about to lose Polaroid, I seized the moment and have put all my efforts and passion into saving Polaroid film. For that, I thank Stefanie Schneider almost exclusively, who played a bigger role than anyone in saving this American symbol of photography.” –Florian Kaps, March 8th 2010 (“Doc” Dr. Florian Kaps, founder of “The Impossible Project”) Exhibitions Selected (selected) 2017 BLICKFELD] Analoge Fotografie, Kommunale Galerie Steglitz-Zehlendorf (G) (catalog), (upcoming)
 Kunstverein Bad Homburg Artlantis, Bad Homburg (G)

 2016 
Instantdreams, Instantdreams Gallery, Berlin 

(S) 2015
 Desert Voices, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) with Pamela Littky 
Blue Nudes, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) 

 2014

 Summer Show, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (G) 6 Finalists, Saatchi Gallery London (G) 
Instantdreams, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (S)
Grand Opening, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) with Banksy, Andy Warhol, Alison Bignon, Sophie Dickens, Victor Gingembre and others
 2013 
Heather's Dream, Short, nominated for the German Short Film Award 2013 (Deutscher Kurzfilmpreis)
Images For Images (Artists fir Tichy), GASK - Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region,  Kutná Hora, Czech Republic, (G) with Richard Prince, Nan Golding...

'Heart and Soul' (Bombay Beach) - 2019 20x20cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid. Signature label with certificate. Artist inventory PL201...

Fear (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 20x24cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 7...

Pool Time (Suburbia) - 2004 40x50cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid, Signed on verso with Certificate, Artist inventory number: 1722. Not mounted. This pro...

Renée's Dream - The Boys (Days of Heaven). Part of the 29 Palms, CA project. - 2006 40x50cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signatur...

High Hopes - 2017, 20x20cm. Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid. Signature label with certificate. Artist inventory PL2017-109. ...

Ensign Broderick I (Ensign Broderick record Shoot 'Blood Crush') - Bombay Beach, CA - 2019 100x120cm, Edition 3/5. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Cer...

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

Narween (Saigon) - 2003 58x56cm, Edition 4/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 469.04. Signature labe and Cert...

Rapture (29 Palms, CA) - 2022 48x46cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival Print, based on the Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 218829. Signature label and Certificate...