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Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

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Period: Late 20th Century
Historical Photo - Giovanni Leone - Vintage Photograph - 1970s
Located in Roma, IT
Historical Photo - Giovanni Leone is a black and white vintage photo depicting the former italian President of the Republic in 1970s.  It belongs to a historical album including his...
Category

Modern Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Kalevala, Karelia, Russia (Dog looking at Lenin poster)
Located in Sante Fe, NM
This print is currently featured in our exhibition, Warm Regards, and will be available to ship after the show closes June 24th, 2017. Pentti Sammallahti is a benchmark figure in co...
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Karl Lagerfeld
Located in New York, NY
Framing Included in Listing Price, Free Shipping for the US, 14-Day Return Policy. One 4.5 x 3.25 inch unique vintage Kodak print of Karl Lagerfeld by Antonio Lopez. Prints are on ...
Category

Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Paris, France, Cities, Black and White Portrait Photography, Bows by RF
Located in New york, NY
A black-and-white image shot on film in Paris, France in the 1980s, Roberta Fineberg’s subject is a young French-African girl with braids, ribbons, and bows that RF photographed in f...
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin, Photographic Paper, Photographic Film

16 x 20" Professional Bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger, Signed
Located in Senoia, GA
16 x 20" vintage silver gelatin photograph of professional bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger (and future film star and Governor of California) posing at the top of his form in Octobe...
Category

Pop Art Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Pino Zac - Vintage Photograph - Vintage Photograph - 1980s
Located in Roma, IT
Pino Zac - Vintage Photograph is an original photograph realized by an anonymous artist in the 1980s. Good conditions.
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Iggy Raw Power - Limited Edition Mick Rock Estate Print
Located in London, GB
Iggy Raw Power - Limited Edition Mick Rock Estate Print Iggy Pop, Raw Power album cover photograph, 1973 (photo Mick Rock). All prints are nu...
Category

Modern Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Bryan Adams Singing Passionately
Located in Austin, TX
Bryan Adams, Canadian rock star who rose to fame in North America with his album Cuts Like a Knife. His album Reckless made him a global superstar and cemented him as one of the stap...
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Archival Pigment

Betsy Drake - Vintage Photo - 1950s
Located in Roma, IT
Vintage Photo depicting Betsy Drake in 1950s. Good condition.
Category

Modern Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Oliver Reed - 20th Century Photography, Films, Actor, Gladiator, Hollywood
Located in Brighton, GB
Edition of 50. Oliver Reid is a striking portrait, on fibre paper, from iconic 20th Century photographer David Steen. Steen’s introduction to photography was as a 15-year-old school ...
Category

Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Paper

George Harrison and Record World, Black and White Photography, 25, 4 x 20, 6 cm
Located in Cologne, DE
The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With a line-up comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they are regarded as the mo...
Category

Modern Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

The Italian Actress Nicoletta Machiavelli - Vintage Photo - 1970s
Located in Roma, IT
Vintage Photo. The Italian Actress Nicoletta Machiavelli during a break. Photo by Guido Di Domenico.
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

David Bowie Ohio 1976 by Janet Macoska
Located in Austin, TX
Signed limited edition print of David Bowie, photographed performing live on stage in Ohio, 1976 by Janet Macoska Available in various sizes: 16x20" Lambda C-Type Edition: 25 20x24...
Category

Photorealist Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

C Print

Sculptor Louise Nevelson photographed in her NYC studio signed by Jack Mitchell
Located in Senoia, GA
11 x 14" vintage silver gelatin photograph of famed sculptor Louise Nevelson taken in her NYC studio, 1974, numbered 12/25 and signed by Jack Mitchell in pencil on the verso. Comes ...
Category

Pop Art Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

A. Rear View
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Staging Pictures: Early Polaroids focuses on Stivers' working Polaroid prints, shot with a Hasselblad Polaroid back for instant proofing of lighting and composition of his subjects. ...
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

The German-American Actress Barbara Bouchet - Vintage photo - 1980s
Located in Roma, IT
Vintage Photo. The Actress Barbara Bouchet during her program "Body Body".
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Robert & Patti, New York 1969 “Vertical II”
Located in Austin, TX
Signed limited edition fine art print of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, taken in New York by celebrated photographer and filmmaker, Norman Seeff in 1969. This Patty Smith...
Category

Photorealist Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Musicians and friends Itzak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman
Located in Senoia, GA
11 x 14" vintage silver gelatin photograph of Musicians and friends Itzak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman photographed at Perlman's apartment in ...
Category

Pop Art Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Norman Parkinson 'Apollonia van Ravenstein in Palm Beach, 1983'
Located in New York, NY
Dutch fashion model Apollonia van Ravenstein at the Lannan Foundation, Palm Beach, wearing a Mary McFadden dress on Ronald Bladen’s The X. Town & Country, October 1983. Apollonia va...
Category

Modern Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

C Print

Olivetti Electronic Writing System - Vintage B/W photo - Early 1980s
Located in Roma, IT
Olivetti electronic writing system is an original photograph realized by an Anonymous photographer in the Early 1980s. Typed notes on the rear, the description in Italian " Olivetti...
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Steve Martin, “Let’s Get Small Sequence”, framed 24x48" print by Norman Seeff
Located in Austin, TX
Signed limited edition 24" x 48" print, edition number 26/50. Custom frames with 8 ply matte and non-glare museum glass Frame dimensions: 56” wide x 30” high x 1” deep As a renowne...
Category

Photorealist Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

David Bowie Tea and Sympathy New York City
Located in Austin, TX
Signed limited edition 20x24" print of David Bowie by Kevin Cummins, taken outside the Tea & Sympathy, the legendary British themed restaurant in NYC, 1996. This David Bowie print...
Category

Photorealist Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

C Print

Jeff Koons 21st Century, Contemporary, Celebrity, Photography
Located in München, BY
Edition 10 Also available in 40 x 50 cm / 16 x 20 inch, Edition 25 Black and white portrait of artist Jeff Koons smoking while sitting on a toilet and holds two models in his arms....
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Ayatollah Khomeini - Vintage Photograph - 1970s
Located in Roma, IT
Ayatollah Khomeini is a vintage black and white photograph realized in the 1970s. Good conditions.
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Lou Reed And Andy Warhol - Limited Edition Mick Rock Estate Print
Located in London, GB
Lou Reed And Andy Warhol - Limited Edition Mick Rock Estate Print Lou Reed and Andy Warhol, New York, 1976 (photo Mick Rock). All prints are numbered by the Estate Edition size v...
Category

Modern Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

The Beatles Shea Stadium 1965
Located in Austin, TX
The Beatles, approaching the stage at Shea Stadium by Robert Whitaker. The Beatles walking onto the field at Shea Stadium in New York City. This show ...
Category

Photorealist Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

C Print

Francesca Woodman, Providence, RI
Located in New York, NY
Francesca Woodman in Providence, Rhode Island (1976) photographed by George Lange. 11 x 14" archival pigment print 17 x 21 x 2" frame with UV plexgias Edition 2 of 10, signed and e...
Category

Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment, Digital Pigment

Eva Herzigova and John Foster, South of France, 1991
Located in München, BY
Printed later. Edition of 5 Portrait of the young Supermodel Eva Herzigova and John Foster on a motorbike, South of France, 1991 Fashion and fine art e...
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Photographer Richard Avedon planning an exhibition, signed by Jack Mitchell
Located in Senoia, GA
11 x 14" vintage silver gelatin photograph of photographer Richard Avedon planning his Marlborough Gallery exhibition in 1975. Signed by Jack Mitchell on the print verso. Comes direc...
Category

Pop Art Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

C.
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Staging Pictures: Early Polaroids focuses on Stivers' working Polaroid prints, shot with a Hasselblad Polaroid back for instant proofing of lighting and composition of his subjects. ...
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Emma Shapplin - Oversize Signed Limited Edition Print
Located in London, GB
Emma Shapplin - Oversize Signed Limited Edition Print French soprano Emma Shapplin, covered in gauze, photographed for her second studio album, Etterna (2002). Etterna was produced ...
Category

Modern Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Color, Archival Pigment

Rolling Stones Mick Jagger by Jim Herrington
Located in Austin, TX
Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, 1989 by Jim Herrington 17x22" Archival pigment print on baryta 315 gsm, acid-free, 100% cotton-fiber paper. Edition 75 ...
Category

Photorealist Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Eddie Vedder by Kevin Westenberg Signed Limited Edition
Located in London, GB
Eddie Vedder Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam by Kevin Westenberg- Signed Limited Edition Kevin Westenberg is famed for his creation of provocative and electrif...
Category

Modern Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Koylia, Finland (Two Kittens Playing in a Field)
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Pentti Sammallahti was born in 1950 in Helsinki, Finland. Sammallahti was surrounded by works from his grandmother, Hildur Larsson, who was a photographer in the early 1900s. Sammallahti has been photographing the world around him with a poetic eye since the age of eleven. At the age of nine, he visited "The Family of Man...
Category

Minimalist Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Karen Seltenrich "Groupies", signed limited edition silver gelatin print
Located in Austin, TX
Karen Seltenrich by Baron Wolman, taken in San Francisco in 1970 as part of Baron's Groupies series, taken for Rolling Stone magazine. Limited edition number 14/150, signed and note...
Category

Photorealist Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Dizzy Gillespie Playing the Trumpet - Vintage Photo - 1970s
Located in Roma, IT
Dizzy Gillespie playing the trumpet is an original black and white photo realized in the 1970s. The photo depicts John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie trumpet ...
Category

Modern Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Subway 30, Kids, 1980s, NYC, Black & White Photograph, Subway, Limited Ed.
Located in Riverdale, NY
John Conn New York City Subway photographs. These limited edition fine art photographs were originally taken between 1975 and 1982. Each black and white photograph is signed and numbered. Edition of 15. 20x30 image printed on 24x36 archival paper. This is framed. In this series, Conn captured the graffiti and one of the most crime ridden periods in New York. According to one source “In the 1980s, over 250 felonies were committed every week in the system, making the New York subway the most dangerous mass transit system in the world.” One image captures an Irish Catholic Nun on the Subway reading about the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II which took place on May 13 1981. Another captures a knife wielding arm through a subway window. This iconic Subway series shot is part of the permanent collection of The New York Historical Society and Hoboken Historical Museum. About John Conn John Conn got his start as a Marine Combat photographer, and later earned his BFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York. As a freelance photographer and writer, he has captured a range of subjects photojournalism delving into political and social issues, nature and landscapes, architecture, and underwater images. His work has appeared in: New York Times Sunday Magazine; Time/Life Books; IMAX Films; Village Voice; Human Rights Magazine; Shutterbug Magazine; Hasseleblad Magazine; American Photographer; RangeFinder Magazine; LensWork Magazine; Ocean Realm; Dive Travel Magazine; Picture Magazine...
Category

Realist Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Ink, Archival Paper

Freddie Mercury of Queen, last performance Wembley Stadium 1986 by Denis O'Regan
Located in Austin, TX
Fine art 20x24" print of Freddie Mercury of Queen on stage at Wembley Stadium, London, 1986, taken by acclaimed photographer, Denis O'Regan. This was Fred...
Category

Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

RICHARD AVEDON - CENTER FOR CREATIVE IMAGING
Located in Portland, ME
Avedon, Richard. RICHARD AVEDON - CENTER FOR CREATIVE IMAGING. Poster, 1991. Signed in ink by Avedon. Captioned " Gordon Stevenson, drifter Interstate 90 Butte Montana...
Category

Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Offset

David Bowie Aladdin Sane by Brian Duffy framed
Located in Austin, TX
David Bowie Aladdin Sane album cover print from Brian Duffy Taken from the original 1973 negative, these official Duffy Archive prints are open edition, authenticated with the offic...
Category

Photorealist Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

C Print

Rock and Roll Circus Group Portrait
Located in Austin, TX
Signed limited edition, archival pigment print from photographer Alec Byrne, taken during the Rock and Roll Circus taping on December 11th, 1968 featuring, ...
Category

Photorealist Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment, Silver Gelatin

HANK WILLIAMS III by Jim Herrington
Located in Austin, TX
Hank Williams III, Nashville, Tennessee, 1998. On August 17, 1952, Hank Williams was jailed overnight in Alexander City, Alabama for drunken and disorderly behavior. 46 years, 2 months and 10 days later in 1998. photographer Jim Herrington paid homage to that moment whilst photographing his grandson Shelton Williams, aka Hank III, in the stench-y alley behind the Ryman Auditorium. The “jail door...
Category

Photorealist Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Women Embrace on Floor Near JudiJupiter’s Legs Les Mouches, NY, NY June 1978
Located in New York, NY
Women Embrace on Floor Near JudiJupiter’s Legs Les Mouches, NY, NY June 1978 Signed, titled, dated, and numbered, verso Gelatin silver print 20 x 16 inches (Edition of 5 + 2 APs) ...
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

'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

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

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

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

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

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

Queen arriving at Knebworth by helicopter 1986 by Denis O'Regan
Located in Austin, TX
Fine art 20x24" print of rock band Queen, Freddie Mercury, Brian May, John Deacon and Roger Taylor, arriving by helicopter to Knebworth Park in the UK. Taken by acclaimed photographe...
Category

Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

On the set of the film Paris Texas - Wim Wenders - 1984
Located in Roma, IT
On the set of the film Paris Texas - Wim Wenders is a vintage black and white photograph realized in 1984. Good conditions.
Category

Modern Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Geroge Harrison, Plane, Black and White Photography, 1970s, 20, 8 x 25, 3 cm
Located in Cologne, DE
The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With a line-up comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they are regarded as the mo...
Category

Modern Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Black and White, Silver Gelatin

The Beatles, Office, Black and White Photoography, 20, 7 x 25, 4 cm
Located in Cologne, DE
The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With a line-up comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they are regarded as the mo...
Category

Modern Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Black and White, Silver Gelatin

Blondie rooftop hammock by Lynn Goldsmith signed limited edition 20x24" print
Located in Austin, TX
Signed limited edition 20x24"" print of Blondie members, Chris Stein and Debbie Harry relaxing in a hammock on the rooftop of their New York City apartment in 1978 by Lynn Goldsmith....
Category

Photorealist Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

C Print

Reed Bowie Jagger Hug - Limited Edition Mick Rock Estate Print
Located in London, GB
Reed Bowie Jagger Hug - Limited Edition Mick Rock Estate Print Lou Reed, Mick Jagger and David Bowie share a hug, Café Royal, London, 1973 (photo Mick Rock). All prints are number...
Category

Modern Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

David Bowie Aladdin Sane Eyes Open, limited edition by Duffy
Located in Austin, TX
Museum quality fine art print of an alternative shot from the cover shoot for Aladdin Sane by David Bowie from the official Duffy Archive. This official Duffy Archive print is avail...
Category

Conceptual Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

African American Large Vintage Color Photograph Dandy C Print Photo Ike Ude
By Iké Udé
Located in Surfside, FL
BEYOND DECORUM, CLOSED AND OPEN Series, I am selling each individually. they are pairs of open and closed jackets. I will include the second photo for reference. This listing is just for the open jacket photograph. Vintage C-print on Fuji crystal archive paper. Image size is 40 x 30", sheet measures 50 X 35 Provenance: printed by Muse X, Los Angeles. I believe these were test, proof prints. They are not signed or editioned The work of Nigerian-born Iké Udé explores a world of dualities: photographer/performance artist, artist/spectator, African/post-nationalist, mainstream/marginal, individual/everyman and fashion/art. Iké Udé (born 1964) is a Nigerian-American photographer, performance artist, Ike Ude was born in 1964 in Lagos, Nigeria where he was raised. The eldest son of a wealthy family, he was exposed to photography and portraiture at an early age by dressing up for biweekly family portraits. Udé knew he was an artist by the age of six, when he developed a habit of firing a catapult at passers-by when he disapproved of their walk or the way they were dressed. As an adolescent, Udé attended the Government Secondary School, a British boarding school in Afikpo Nigeria. He was a habitué of London before he moved to New York in 1981 to study Media Communications at Hunter College, CUNY. He began his art career in the late 1980s with abstract painting and drawing. Since the 1990s, photography has been his primary medium. Udé is a dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria. Udé's paintings and drawings are less well known than his photography, though critics and art historians have recognized his early work. The late Henry Geldzahler, said of Udé's paintings and works on paper: "I am touched and amazed at the ways in which he manages to blend invisibly the modernist tradition with his own Nigerian roots. There is never anything forced in the conjunction; air and light seem to be his media." Udé began his Cover Girls series in 1994. Each photograph imitates the cover of a popular fashion or lifestyle magazines, in which the artist himself is featured as the model. (ala the work of Cindy Sherman) The photographs were consciously stylized, posed, photographed and then paired with type matching that of the respected magazine. At first glance, each photograph appears to be an authentic magazine cover. Udé used the magazine cover as a stage to critique the fetishism of the upper class white model and the effects of popular culture on today's consumerist society. The series was exhibited in 1994 in the New York City gallery Exit Art. Udé's black and white series of photographs, Uli, references both high fashion and Uli body art, wall motifs from Udé's Igbo heritage. The photographs explore the anonymity of the inscribed and disembodied self. Udé's dynamic use of light, namely the chiaroscuro effect, serves as a critical compositional element in the series. Udé's Beyond Decorum series, begun in 1999, juxtaposes photographs of men's shirts and women's pumps with suggestive personal advertisements in place of the clothing tags. With its accompanying book, Beyond Decorum: Photographs by Iké Udé, the series traveled across the United States and Canada. The exhibition was shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Portland, Maine; OBORO in Montreal, Canada; Sert Gallery; Carpenter Center at the Harvard University Art Museum; and MAK Museum in Vienna, Austria before traveling for two more years internationally. Udé's Paris Hilton: Fantasy and Simulacrum is a conversation between his alter ego, Visconti, and the celebrity Paris...
Category

Conceptual Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color

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

Outsider Art Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

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

Sunday, Late Afternoon, Ojai building rooftop (California Blue Screen) - analog
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Sunday, Late Afternoon, Ojai building rooftop, 1997 (California Blue Screen) Edition 1/5, 44x59 cm, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid, Certificate a...
Category

Outsider Art Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

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

Stefanie on bed looking quite dead (29 Palms, CA) - Analog, Polaroid, mounted
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Stefanie on bed looking quite dead (29 Palms, CA) - 1998 130x130cm, Edition 1/5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the Artist, based on a Polaroid. Signed on back with Certificate, ...
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Metal

Harmony Motel (29 Palms, CA) - Polaroid, Analog, Landscape, Contemporary, Color
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Harmony Motel (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper (matte) based on an expir...
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

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

'Hans' from the movie Immaculate Springs - starring Udo Kier
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Hans (Immaculate Springs) - 1998 Edition of 5, 58x57cm, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. ...
Category

Contemporary Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

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

Jack Nicholson
Located in Austin, TX
Signed limited edition archival print of Jack Nicholson at the Carlisle Hotel, March 1981 by Allan Tannenbaum. Allan Tannenbaum prints are available in...
Category

Photorealist Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Crowded Kitzbühel, Austria, Estate Edition, Portrait Photograph
Located in Los Angeles, CA
This 1980 portrait photograph, captured by society photographer Slim Aarons, features skiers making their way between the slopes in Kitzbühel, Austria. This is an estate stamped and...
Category

Realist Late 20th Century Portrait Photography

Materials

Lambda

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