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Contemporary Photography

CONTEMPORARY STYLE

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.

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Style: Contemporary
Womb - Contemporary, Figurative, Woman, 21st Century, Polaroid, photograph, life
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Womb #02 - 2006, 56x55cm, Edition 2/5, Analog C-Print, printed by hand by the artist on Fuji Archive Crystal Paper. Based on a Polaroid Certificate and Signature label artist In...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Photography

Materials

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

Brutalist Symphony II, London - Conceptual, architectural, color photography
Located in Cambridge, GB
'Brutalist Symphony', photograph by Richard Heeps from the London's Barbican Estate. There is a subtle beauty in the light and colour of this conceptual architectural photograph of t...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin

David Burdeny - Movieland, Saskatchewan, CA, Photography 2020, Printed After
Located in Greenwich, CT
Due to travel restrictions of the current pandemic, Burdeny felt like a return to the prairie roots of his upbringing. This landscape of big sky and wide, open spaces influenced Burd...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Autumn
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
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...
Category

1990s Contemporary Photography

Materials

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

Green Nails - underwater nude photograph - archival pigment print
Located in Beverly Hills, CA
Underwater photograph of a naked woman Her young body on the red background and classic heavy breasts leave spectators speechless. It is particularly true for the big prints 44 by 58...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

The Starfall - underwater nude photograph - archival pigment print 17.5" x 23.5"
Located in Beverly Hills, CA
Underwater nude photograph of a young beautiful golden hair woman on black background. Her body is partially covered with a golden scarf leaving uncovered beautiful buttocks. Origi...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Archival Pigment

Palm Springs Palm Trees (Californication) - Polaroid
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Palm Springs Palm Trees (Californication) - 2023 50x49cm. Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist I...
Category

1990s Contemporary Photography

Materials

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

Marmo di Carrara - large format photograph of iconic Italian marble quarry
Located in San Francisco, CA
Signed large scale photograph of the Mediterranean marble quarries in Carrara, Italy, iconic material source of classic Italian art and architecture, captured with a large format camera to allow epic scale print sizes with incredible image details Marmo di Carrara...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Archival Pigment, Archival Ink, Giclée

Batman, Lenticular
Located in München, BY
Edition 15 Framed Lenticular In this image we can see Batman x-rayed. A man with x-ray vision, NICK VEASEY creates art that shows what it is really like inside. Nick’s work with rad...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Lenticular

Two World-Class Racing Yachts On the Open Seas, Black and White, Horizontal
Located in US
"In Pursuit of Northern Light" In this best-selling image, the iconic 12-Meter yachts race on the open seas. With a strong history of competition in the Olympics and Americas' Cup races, these boats represent the apex of design. The print series Sail: Majesty at Sea is an intimate look at two revered racing boat...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Hindsigh - Contemporary, Nude, Women, Polaroid, 21st Century
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Hindsigh - 2021 - 20x20cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs, digital C-Print based on a Polaroid, Not mounted. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2021-1...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

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

Guitar, 1993
Located in Hudson, NY
Listing is for UNFRAMED print. Inquire within for framing. Edition of 1 of 20 If the exhibition piece is sold or the customer orders a different print size, the photograph is prod...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Swim-in-Pool Supply Co. Las Vegas - American Color Sign Photography
Located in Cambridge, GB
Swim-in-Pool Supply Co. photograph from Richard Heeps 'Dream in Color' series. This fun original artwork really shows Richard's unique eye as a photographer. Captured in Las Vegas in...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin

Under the Boardwalk, Wildwood, New Jersey - Beach Color Photography
Located in Cambridge, GB
'Under the boardwalk, down by the sea' - one of Richard's favourite songs by The Drifters, that this photo is not only named after, but really emulates. T...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin

Pink Bathroom
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Patty Carroll has been known for her use of highly intense, saturated color photographs since the 1970’s. Her most recent project, “Anonymous Women,” consists of a 3-part series of s...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Rocky Peaks, monochrome photograph, framed, limited edition, signed by artist
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Black and white fine art landscape photography Gerald Berghammer. Archival Pigment Ink Print, Edition 1/7, signed, numbered, dated. Aluminum frame, matt black, natural white archival...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Tony Ward Figure series #1, 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 nude model Tony Ward. From personality portraits and advert...
Category

1980s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

'Yellow Poppies' Limited Edition photo floral botanical yellow green 24 x 36"
Located in Penzance, GB
'Yellow Poppies' ('Mono No Aware' Series) Limited edition archival photograph. Unframed, hand signed and numbered _________________ Buds, blooms, and the fading glories of Icelandic ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Archival Pigment

Organza dream - Signed limited edition sensual fine art print, Model semi naked
Located in Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona
Organza dream - Signed limited edition archival pigment print, Edition 2 of 5 This is an Archival Pigment print on fiber based paper ( Hahnemühle Photo Rag® Baryta 315 gsm , Acid...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Color, Giclée, Pigment, Archival Pig...

Lisa Lyon
Located in Toronto, Ontario
Robert Mapplethorpe's (1946-1989) place in the canon was earned from his incredible output of images that ranged from beautiful to brutal. Mapplethorpe boldly showcased the beauty ...
Category

1980s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Now More Choices, Wall St., New York
Located in Hudson, NY
These photographs are Dye Sublimation Prints. Framing options available. "Surfing Color" presents photographs that are abstract creations born from realism. Kocharian emphasizes the ambient color in the tradition of minimalism, observing the beauty and mystery of light, shadows, tone, and moods. The environments within the photographs are transformed into ones of symbolism, challenging the viewer to question the images. As a result, a tension is created, like an energy trapped in a frame attempting to escape. Kocharian, who is also a filmmaker, brings a cinematic eye to his photography, as we experience images that reflect simplicity through his focus on light, color, and the documentation of ordinary life. In “Going Home,” Los Angeles a pool-like shadow on the foreground alters the nature and surrounding of the image as light breaches from the center of the bike during sunset. “Blue Highway”, Nevada leads the viewer into the deep blue of early dawn and draws them into a new beginning. His influences in these photographs include artists such as Mark Rothko and photographer William Eggleston, as Kocharian uses color, texture, geometry, and shapes to tell a story that evokes contemplation and introspection. Born in Armenia, Haik Kocharian was introduced to the world of art in his early childhood by his parents, who were theater and film actors. He began his studies at the Armenian Theater Academy and continued his education in film at Brooklyn College, where he also studied photography. Kocharian resides in New York City. In 2015, Kocharian released his first feature film, "Please be Normal," starring Oscar-nominated actor Sam Waterston. The film was nominated for a Critic’s Pick in the New York Times and won awards at two film festivals. Kocharian is actively involved in charity work and, as a photographer, he has collaborated with many non-profit organizations in the U.S. and abroad such as Village Health Partnership in Ethiopia and Meaningful World, a UN-affiliated NGO in Burundi, Kenya, and Rwanda. He has exhibited his works within galleries in New York such as Galerie Mourlot, Robin Rice Gallery, 92 Y Tribeca, and James Cohan Gallery, as well as group exhibitions at the Museum of the City of New York and the International Center for Photography. Kocharian was also a finalist in the Smithsonian Magazine Photo Competition. This is his third solo show at the Robin Rice Gallery. Color, urban, American, New York, New York City, NYC, Landscape, Night, Evening, Surreal, nocturne, warm colors, rain, ICM, noir, streetlight, subway, metro, train, Wall st...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Grace Kelly Carrying Groceries
Located in Austin, TX
This black and white portrait features American movie actress Grace Kelly, best known for her roles in "To Catch a Theif", "Rear Window", and "High Society". The actress is pictured ...
Category

1950s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Archival Pigment

Academic Books, Hanoi - Contemporary Asian Color Photography
Located in Cambridge, GB
As physical books are beginning to disappear in the modern digital life, we crave to bring books back into our home and this picture is the perfect way to do so. Shot in Hanoi in 201...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin

Dot's Diner, Bisbee, Arizona - American color photograph
Located in Cambridge, GB
On the Road, reimagines classic Richard Heeps artworks presented with full film rebate almost like a blown up contact sheet. 'Dot's Diner', photograph from Richard Heeps' 'Dream in ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin

Van Johnson and Ava Gardner Sitting in Car
Located in Austin, TX
This black and white capture features Ava Gardner sitting besides Van Johnson driving car. Van Johnson was an American film, television, theatre and radio actor, singer, and dancer....
Category

1950s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Archival Pigment

Rosanna Lambertucci - Vintage Photograph - 1980s
Located in Roma, IT
Rosanna Lambertucci is a vintage black and white photograph realized in 1980s. Good conditions.
Category

1980s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Canary Islands Dragon Tree, Madeira, black and white photograph, limited edition
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Black and White Fine Art landscape photography. Dragon trees on the beautiful island of Madeira, Portugal. Archival pigment ink print, e...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Digital Pigment

California Cowgirl by Anouk Krantz 2022
Located in Chicago, IL
California Cowgirl (B&W) 2022 ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT Unframed Sizes: 30 x 45 in (76.2 x 114.3 cm) - Edition of 15 + 2 AP (Artist Proofs) SILVER GELATIN PRINT Unframed Size: 11.3 x ...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment, Silver Gelatin

Tree Calm Sea Panorama large color photograph landscape limited edition
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Tree by the Calm Sea Panorama Study 1, Portugal - no. 21300 Prints are made to order in limited editions on Hahnemuehle Photo Rag Baryta. Each print is stamped on the back and signed...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Photography

Materials

Digital Pigment

Love-Dream, Love-Nothing #092 – Nobuyoshi Araki, Woman, Nude, Japan, Photography
Located in Zurich, CH
Nobuyoshi ARAKI (*1940, Japan) Love-Dream, Love-Nothing #092, 2018 gelatin silver print 50.8 x 60 cm (20 x 23 5/8 in.) Print only – Nobuyoshi Araki Nobuyoshi Araki (Tokyo, 1940) is ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

The Bog 003 by Bernhard Lang - Close-up photography, flora, green tones, swamps
Located in Paris, FR
The Bog 003 is a limited-edition photograph by contemporary artist Bernhard Lang. It is a Fine Art Print on Hahnemüle Paper. This photograph is sold unframed as a print only. It is...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper

Avenue Simon Bolivar - Willy Ronis, 20th Century, French Humanist Photography
Located in Paris, FR
One of the famous members of the Humanist photography in France. Signed lower right by the artist. Stamp of the artist's studio on the back.
Category

1950s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin

Blue Pool (Suburbia) - Contemporary, Polaroid, Analog, Portrait
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Blue Pool (Suburbia) 2004 50x49cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Not mounted. The project "Subur...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Photography

Materials

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

Dealer, Kowloon, Hong Kong - Asian Pop Art Color Photography
Located in Cambridge, GB
Dealer, street photography from Richard Heeps series, The Streets of Hong Kong. Richard's aim for his City series is to represent the fingerprint of a place, in this the street store...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin

Sophie- Signed limited edition nude print, Black white photo, Sexy, Contemporary
Located in Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona
Sophie - Signed limited edition archival pigment print, 1995 - Edition of 10 A classical approach, sensual not sexual This image was captured on film. The negative was scanned...
Category

1990s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Black and White, Archival Pigment, Photographic Film, Pi...

Sunrise Along a Remote Stretch of Beach, Color Photography, Horizontal
Located in US
"Blush" During Drew's journey to photograph the icons of the American West, this stretch of coast in Oregon presented one of the most beautiful sunrises he had ever seen. Inspired...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Marilyn Monroe Posed for Life Magazine Vintage Press Print
Located in Austin, TX
Black and white promo photo of Marilyn Monroe posed for Life Magazine with other women, circa 1949. -- One-of-a-kind original vintage press print from the Celebrity Vault archives. ...
Category

1940s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Black and White

Milk and Honey by Hans Withoos
Located in New York City, NY
Fine art inkjet print on special paper rag Ask us for framing options Hans Withoos career spans more than twenty years worldwide. After graduating from the Art Academy. He specializ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Plexiglass, Color, Archival Pigment, Digital Pigment

Anemone - Analogue black and white floral photography, edition of 20
Located in London, GB
'Anemone’ photographed in London, United Kingdom 2023. It is a still life black and white film photograph, made with a large format 4x5 Linhof camera. Giclée print on Hahnemühle ph...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Film, Photographic Paper, Giclée

Black Hellebore No.4 - black and white floral photography, Limited edition 20
Located in London, GB
'Black Hellebore No.4’ London, United Kingdom 2024. It is a still life black and white film photograph, made with a large format 4x5 Linhof camera. The photograph is signed front and back and comes with a Certificate of Authenticity. Carefully placed in a secure cardboard package and shipped with an insured express delivery service. Please feel free to contact if you have any questions. About the artist: Ugne Pouwell is a fine art photographer originally from Lithuania. Today she makes most of her creative work in London, United Kingdom. Her main focus is black-and-white landscape and floral photography. Mainly using a large format 4x5 Linhof camera to express the timeless beauty of the subject in focus. Many of the influences come from 20th-century photography. She processes her work from start to finish: film processing, scanning and printing. Her work is mainly printed on the world's oldest paper-producing houses Hahnemühle and Awagami and some more exclusive work on organic linen and cotton fabrics. Paper and canvas choices are mainly based on organic feeling also adding more special feeling to her work. 2016 Ugne finished her studies at the University of Westminster Photography and Digital Imaging Technologies. She continued her practice by applying scientific knowledge to her everyday work in fine art photography. Awards: 2023 Black Spider Awards, Honourable mention in Still Life 2022 Black Spider Awards, Honourable mention in Still Life 2022 IPA International Photography Awards, Honourable mention in Analogue / Film Fine Art 2021 Mono Visions...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Film, Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Giclée

Bay of Poets - black and white analogue photogrpahy of Italian coast, 100 x 80cm
Located in London, GB
'Bay of Poets' Lerici, Italy 2023 Limited edition of 10. Photograph shot using mid-century large format film camera Linhof. Printed on archival Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Photography

Materials

Film, Photographic Film, Photographic Paper, Giclée

Eclipse Diptych, Galaxy Landscape in Black and White, Black Hole, Space Print
Located in Barcelona, ES
Cyd Fontaine (Lausanne, 1992) is a contemporary artist renowned for her captivating use of dreamy atmospheric gradients, which has helped her carve a distinctive niche in the world o...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Film, Archival Ink, Photographic Paper, C Print, Digital, G...

"Oregon Coast" 1984 - Landscape Photograph
Located in Soquel, CA
Beautiful landscape photograph of the Oregon coast, mounted on a heavy white mat by an unknown artist (American, 20th Century). Signed "CJB" in the lower ...
Category

1980s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin

Invincible
Located in Sante Fe, NM
photo-eye Gallery is very excited to share new works from represented artist Maggie Taylor. After completing her prodigious series of illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Through the Lo...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Ink

Sea spray - Signed limited edition seascape art print, Black white, Contemporary
Located in Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona
An original signed archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag® Baryta 315 gsm paper by Scottish artist Ian Sanderson (1951- 2020) titled ‘ Embruns ‘ Sea sprays, wave on the Spa...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Black and White, Giclé...

Nude Underwater
Located in Sante Fe, NM
Coming from an earlier interest in portraits and street photography, my Nudes in Water are less about eroticism and more about body as the human vessel ...
Category

1980s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Bay Laurel Diptych (Hand-printed cyanotype, 40 x 52 inches combined)
Located in Oakland, CA
These are two separate 40 x 26 inch cyanotypes (unique monotypes) made using the same tree branches flipped over facing the opposite direction, the result being a symmetrical mirror ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Monotype, Photogram, Paper, Archival Paper, Rag Paper

Duality - Contemporary, Polaroid, Black and White, Women, 21st Century, Nude
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Duality - 2020 48x60cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid. Signature label with certificate. Artist inventory PL2020-982. Not mo...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

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

Untitled # 1 1 - 2008 - Expressionist Full Face Black and White Portrait of Man
Located in New York, NY
This is a 39" x 39" black and white archival giclée print on archival exhibition paper. It is part of a limited edition of 6 plus 2 AP. Signed and numbered in the back. It is an exp...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Giclée

Bath Time Story
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Bath Time Story - 2017, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid, not mounted. Signature label and certificate. Artist inventory PL201...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

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

Ancient Laurisilva Forest mystical Woods limited editon
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Ancient Laurisilva Forest Study 19, Portugal - no. 21049 Black and white fine art landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 7. All Gerald Berg...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Digital Pigment

"Double Daisy" Print on Aluminum 43x43 in Ed. of 15 by Mick Fleetwood
Located in Culver City, CA
"Double Daisy" Print on Aluminum 43x43 in Ed. of 15 by Mick Fleetwood Digital photography print on aluminum - ready to hang Mick Fleetwood, the legendary drummer and founding memb...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Photography

Materials

Metal

Palm Trees, Sand Beach, Florida, photograph, limited edition - Gerald Berghammer
Located in Vienna, Vienna
Black and white fine art landscape photography. Archival pigment ink print as part of a limited edition of 9. All Gerald Berghammer prints are made to order in limited editions on Ha...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

Porto Venere No.3 - Italian coast lanscape photography, Limited edition of 20
Located in London, GB
'Porto Venere No.3' Lerici, Italy 2024 Limited edition of 20. Printed on Hahnemühle photo rag Baryta 308 Gsm fine art paper, these limited edition photographs are designed to with...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Photography

Materials

Giclée, Black and White

Untitled, Nude and a serpent . Limited edition color Photograph
Located in Miami Beach, FL
"In a few photographers like Mauricio Velez does aesthetic become ethic. Every portrait scene is seamless. Every composition is an impeccable piece: the light, gesture, even the pref...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Color, Archival Pigment

Martini Corner, Bisbee, Arizona - Vintage interior color photography
Located in Cambridge, GB
Martini Corner, interior photography by Richard Heeps, photographed in Arizona as part of his Dream in Color series. The artwork has rich orange colours and an elegant mid-century fe...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin

Wildlife Tiger Nature Very Large Black White Photograph Vintage India Forest
Located in Norfolk, GB
Aditya Dicky Singh Untitled Photograph on fine-art Hahnemuhle archival paper 65" x 44" unframed (165cm x 112cm) 2017 Edition 1/15 *Should you wish the photograph to be printed ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper

g. paul - lotus
Located in New York, NY
g. paul – lotus 1996 Signed, dated, and numbered, verso Gelatin silver print 20 x 16 inches, sheet 15 x 15 inches, image (Edition of 30) $3500.00 This work is offered by CLAMP in...
Category

1990s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Silver Gelatin

Untitled I by Matthieu Venot - Abstract photography, architecture, large-size
Located in Paris, FR
Untitled I, Ain’t Got No Troubles series, is a limited-edition photograph by contemporary artist Matthieu Venot. This photograph is sold unframed as a print only. It is available in...
Category

2010s Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, Pigment

No title (No 36) Ballet Photography 36x36 in Ed of 28 by Yevgeniy Repiashenko
Located in Culver City, CA
No title (No 36) Ballet Photography 36x36 in Ed of 28 by Yevgeniy Repiashenko Photography Edition of 28 (36" x 36" inch) by Yevgeniy Repiashenko Year photo was taken: 2017 Unframe...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, Archival Pigment

Contemporary photography for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Contemporary photography available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 21st Century and Contemporary, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. If you’re looking to add photography created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of blue, purple, orange, red and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Stefanie Schneider, Tyler Shields, Kirsten Thys van den Audenaerde, and Richard Heeps. Frequently made by artists working with Pigment Print, and Archival Pigment Print and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large Contemporary photography, so small editions measuring 0.4 inches across are also available.

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