Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 5

Stefanie Schneider
I wie Ikarus - Stranger than Paradise

1999

$1,800
£1,379.48
€1,585.47
CA$2,528.19
A$2,829.51
CHF 1,481.15
MX$34,373.41
NOK 18,806.80
SEK 17,747.43
DKK 11,830.41

About the Item

I wie Ikarus (Stranger than Paradise), 1999 43x49cm Edition of 10, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the original Polaroid Certificate and Signature label artist Inventory #507.03 not mounted Born in Germany in 1968, photographer Schneider divides her time between Berlin and Los Angeles. Her process begins in the American West, in locations such as the plains and deserts of Southern California, where she photographs her subjects. In Berlin, Schneider creates a negative from the Polaroid she shot in California and then enlarges her editions/works in the 'Labudio', an analog color laboratory she designed, built and dedicated to the old school craft of photography. THE GREATER THE EMPTINESS THE GRANDER THE ART – Stefan Gronert Not “Twenty-six Gasoline Stations” but “29 Palms, CA”! Forty-two years after Ed Ruscha’s legendary book, there is no gasoline station at the beginning of the book that is here at hand. Instead it is the open hearted Radha – with orange hair, pink-colored overalls and a bashful, or rather cunning, gaze that is directed downward – with which this book begins! And with her and with Max – attention: a woman –, one whose appearance is in accordance with the same styling, it comes to an end as well – after Radha has in the meantime colored her fingernails pink, again endowed with the same open heartedness and the same look which now, however, reveals in combination with her altered facial expression an “old-maidish” turning away from the viewer. This may serve as an example for a vivid and understandable transformation which flows into a large-scale representation of a cheerless settlement beneath a shining, blue sky – there a figure, lost straightaway, becomes overwhelmed. Pictures which in 1998/99 play in the harsh California sunlight or in spaces that are not exactly cozy and comfortable. “Play” is the correct word in this regard, for precisely in view of the pictures of persons, there remains more than just doubt as to whether we are looking at staged scenes or have simply happened upon the high-strung “reality” of a (wannabe) film world. Yet not all the pictures have the same character of a glaring, plastic world. Upon flipping through the pages, we also encounter unpretentious, literally “colorless” scenes in undefined interiors, or unspectacular views resembling a still life and opening out onto a nowhere land. That which connects all participants in these picture-worlds is the observation that they appear to be exhausted, lost, empty or uncertain about their existence. One is almost reminded of the empty gazes and loneliness of the protagonists in the pictures of large cities painted by Manet or Degas in the era of Early Modernism. With one exception, all the photographs which are reproduced here, which originally measure 60 by 70 cm but which here, in their present size and configuration, make productive use of the possibilities presented by the medium of the book, manifest several elements of B-movies: smoking, naked, made-up and muscular persons who are not inclined to conform entirely to the vision of Hollywood dreams. Beauty and vexation, eroticism and loneliness enter into a mixture which reveals the rift between desire and truth. From a distance, one is reminded of the “Untitled Film Stills” of Cindy Sherman, which in this regard are not nearly as drastic. Yet whereas her photos from the seventies are characterized by a cool, objective mode of representation in historicizing blackand-white, the photographs of Stefanie Schneider evince a soft, sometimes seemingly pictorial visual language with a coloration ranging from the pale to the artificial-glaring. As in many other pictures of Stefanie Schneider which often present themselves to us as sequences, these photos refer back as well to the perceptual stereotypes of film. Making use of instant photography, proceeding from which significantly enlarged C-prints come into being, her pictures summon up the impression of a narration without ultimately becoming part of a plot that is readable in a linear fashion. The illusion of the narrative element, however, simply enhances the experience of a renunciation of just this aspect. For the picture titles as well – and also the title of this publication – provide no real help with the imaginary construction of a story. Nevertheless, names return which include the first name of the artist herself: hence is everything not in fact a game but rather a series of authentic and instantaneous images, or is it after all nothing other than a staging, a game – how real is life? The paucity of plot elements, which contradicts all expectation of a cinematic style, as well as the emptiness and loneliness of the persons, enters into a peculiar, sometimes seemingly surreal association with the magic of the sun-drenched expanses of the dreamlike landscape. Just as the fantasy and imagination of the viewer are stimulated, so to the same great extent does the redemption of these visual figures of love founder on a void whose glaze is created, not least of all, by the peculiar blurriness of the photographic representation. The seemingly amateur character of these pictures, which have in no way been treated with any excessive scrupulousness, leaves us with a stimulating incertitude as to their interpretation, one in which the spheres of reality, fiction or dream are scarcely capable any longer of being differentiated. Thus the gaps and the scenic openness of what is presented ultimately set in motion a self-appraisal. So what remains after “29 Palms, CA”? Perhaps that hope which deviates from the saying of Ruscha that is quoted in the title: The stronger the photography the better the reality will be! Translated by George Frederick Takis Stefanie Schneider lives and works in the California High Desert where her 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.

More From This Seller

View All
Into the Sunset (Stranger than Paradise)
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Into the Sunset - 2008 40x40cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory #4665. Not mount...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

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

Into the Sun (Stranger than Paradise)
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Into the Sun (Stranger than Paradise) - 2008 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Invent...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

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

Poetic Passages (Stranger than Paradise)
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Poetic Passages (Stranger than Paradise) - 2008 40x40cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist In...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

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

Final Approach (Stranger than Paradise)
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Final Approach (Stranger than Paradise) - 2008 40x40cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inv...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

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

Magic Hour (Musica Poetica)
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Magic Hour (Musica Poetica) - 1999 Edition 3/10, 44x59cm. Analog C-Print, hand-printed and enlarged by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Certificat...
Category

1990s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

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

Airspace (Stranger than Paradise)
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Airspace (Stranger than Paradise) - 2008 40x40cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

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

You May Also Like

Where the Winds Blow by Osama Esber - Contemporary Photography
Located in Chicago, IL
Available Sizes: 16” x 20” Edition of 25 with 3 Artist Proofs 20” x 24” Edition of 10 with 3 Artist Proofs 30” x 40” Edition of 7 with 3 Artist Proofs Artist Poem on "Where the Win...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Away she flies
By Alice Zilberberg
Located in New York, NY
This project emerged from the realities of struggling with an end of a relationship that was salted dry through infidelity. After a complicated breakup, I found myself on a trip in t...
Category

2010s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

C Print

Untitled #087, from the project 'Lucid Dream' – Jun Ahn, Fine Art Photography
By Jun Ahn
Located in Zurich, CH
Jun AHN (*1981, South Korea) Untitled #087, from the project 'Lucid Dream', 2021 HDR Ultrachrome Archival Pigment Print Image 50,8 x 50,8 cm (20 x 20 in.) Sheet 50,8 x 50,8 cm (20 x ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Elusive XXIV, Photograph, Archival Ink Jet
By Katina Desmond
Located in Yardley, PA
The images in Katina Desmond's "Elusive" series are uniquely toned by the artist and dye-infused onto sheer matte aluminum surface. Contemporary float mounting, ready to hang. The al...
Category

2010s Other Art Style Color Photography

Materials

Archival Ink

Untitled #35
By Vanessa Marsh
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Vanessa Marsh is an American artist living and working in California. Her series The Sun Beneath the Sky reflects upon the nature of light, atmosphere, geology and time. Layers of pa...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Photogram

Untitled #42
By Vanessa Marsh
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Vanessa Marsh is an American artist living and working in California. Her series The Sun Beneath the Sky reflects upon the nature of light, atmosphere, geology and time. Layers of pa...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Photogram