City Photography

Down to the Bay (San Francisco) - 2023 20x20cm, Edition of 7, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signed on back with Certif...

'Police Patrol' 1978 by Alain Le Garsmeur Limited Edition Archival Pigment Print A 28th Precinct policeman reads notes in his police patrol car in Harlem, New York City, USA, Apr...

'Reno Crossing' 1979 by Alain Le Garsmeur Limited Edition Archival Pigment Print APPROACHING RENO CITY ON AN AMTRAK TRAIN, NEVADA, USA, 1979. Paper size : 10 x 12 inches / 25 x ...

'Dancing Partners' 1979 by Alain Le Garsmeur Limited Edition Archival Pigment Print People dance under stringed lights outside the Chicago Board of Trade during a Dinner and Dance evening, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1979. Paper size : 40x30 inches / 101 x 76 cm Limited edition Edition Size 5 only this paper size Printed 2021 certificate of authenticity provided All prints are on archival photographic papers and limited edition per paper size offered. Total editions per image 100 only. 10x12 inches edition size 25 12x16 inches edition size 20 20x16 inches edition size 20 20x24 inches edition size 15 30x20 inches edition size 8 40x30 inches edition size 5 60x40 inches edition size 5 72x48 inches edition size 2 Alain Le Garsmeur was born in France in 1943 and after assisting the likes of Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin and Donald Silverstein became a prolific editorial documentary photographer for publications which included Fiagaro Magazine, The Independent, Newsweek and the The Observer as well as The Sunday Times. See photo Bio for more details. 1970s 1970 70s Lights...

Kabul by Justin Creedy Smith Street scenes, Kabul Afghanistan, during a pre-christmas visit by French foreign minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, to the French soldiers based in Afghanistan. Photo December 2006 Exquisite large oversize 30 x 20 inches archival pigment print - Galerie Prints Limited...

Digital C-print Signed and numbered, verso 20 x 20 inches (Edition of 10) 30 x 30 inches (Edition of 5) This photograph is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Please no...

Albumen print by Charles Marville circa 1856. Blind Stamp on mount recto.

'Cable Car America' 1979 by Alain Le Garsmeur Limited Edition Archival Pigment Print A cable car carries passengers through the steep streets of San Francisco, California, 1979. Paper size : 40x30 inches / 101 x 76 cm Limited edition Edition Size 5 only this paper size Printed 2021 certificate of authenticity provided All prints are on archival photographic papers and limited edition per paper size offered. Total editions per image 100 only. 10x12 inches edition size 25 12x16 inches edition size 20 20x16 inches edition size 20 20x24 inches edition size 15 30x20 inches edition size 8 40x30 inches edition size 5 60x40 inches edition size 5 72x48 inches edition size 2 Alain Le Garsmeur was born in France in 1943 and after assisting the likes of Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin and Donald Silverstein became a prolific editorial documentary photographer for publications which included Fiagaro Magazine, The Independent, Newsweek and the The Observer as well as The Sunday Times. See photo Bio for more details. 1970s 1970 70s USA San Francisco California American Flag Tourist Cable Car Grand Building Stairs Vintage Retro Summer

'Chengdu City Life' 1985 by Alain Le Garsmeur Limited Edition Archival Pigment Print Family life in one of the many crowded Chengdu City alleyways, Suchuan Province, Southwest China...

Megachess A giant game of chess in Saint Lucia, in the Lesser Antilles, February 1993. Paper size 40 x 60" inches / 101 x 152 cm Estate Stamped Collection Edition to 150 Phot...

'Hard To Reach' 1984 by Alain Le Garsmeur Limited Edition Archival Pigment Print A small immigrant child from Cape Verde standing under the family’s washing, Lisbon, Portugal, 1984...

Chromogenic print on Kodak Endura paper Signed and numbered on label, verso 24 x 20 inches (Edition of 4) 61 x 50 inches (Edition of 6) This photograph is offered by ClampArt, loca...

'Harlem Umbrellas' 1978 by Alain Le Garsmeur Limited Edition Archival Pigment Print USA, HARLEM, NEW YORK CITY- APRIL 1978. Harlem residents hiding their faces with umbrellas, New...

Chromogenic print on Kodak Endura paper Signed and numbered on label, verso 24 x 20 inches (Edition of 4) 61 x 50 inches (Edition of 6) This photograph is offered by ClampArt, loca...

Chromogenic print Signed, numbered, and dated 27.6 x 35.4 inches, sheet (Edition of 5) 19.7 x 23.6 inches, sheet (Edition of 10) This photograph is offered by ClampArt, located in...

A side street near the City Gate in Baroda City (later Vadodara), Gujarat, India, January 1947. Original Publication : Picture Post – 4325 – India – pub. 1947 (Photo Bert Hardy) ...

This photograph is printed on Japanese Paper. The price is for an unframed photograph. 11" X 14" Edition of 25. The Robin Rice Gallery is pleased to announce, 25 Years of Polaroi...

Mid Century Modern Palm Springs Architecture. Steve McQueen. Classic Vintage 356 Porsche, Midnight Modern Series Architecture Palm Springs. Archival Inkjet Print on Cotton Paper. Mi...

Googie sign photography at its finest, the iconic and memorable Space Age Lodge, in Gila Bend, Arizona. Photograph by Richard Heeps from his Dream in Colour series, looking like a pa...

Traffic passing by the Hotel Krone in Lech, Austria, 1960. Gorgeous print measuring 40 x 40" inches / ca 101 x 101 cm’s paper size. Estate Stamped Collection Edition to 150 Pho...

The town centre at the ski resort of Gstaad, Switzerland, 1961. Gorgeous print measuring 40 x 40" inches / ca 101 x 101 cm’s paper size. Estate Stamped...

A woman by the pool on the roof of the Loews Hotel, Monte Carlo, Monaco, August 1975. Gorgeous print measuring 40 x 60" inches / ca 101.6 x 152.4cm’s paper size. Estate Stamped Collection Edition to 150 Photo by Slim Aarons Printed in 2025 Limited to 150 prints only (regardless of paper size) Hand-numbered in ink on the front Blind embossed Slim Aarons signature Certificate of authenticity included Unframed archival pigment print (Full framing service available – please enquire) Worldwide shipping from London, England, issued by The Slim Aarons Estate Available Sizes & Pricing: 10x10” / 10x12” $1,800 12x12” / 12x16” $2,400 16x16” / 16x20” $3,000 20x20” / 20x24” $3,600 20x30” $3,900 30x30” / 30x40” $4,200 40x40” / 40x60” $5,400 48x48” / 50x50“ $5,700 48x72” $6,100 60x60” (Giclee) $6,500 Custom sizes available – please enquire. About Slim Aarons: Slim Aarons (1916–2006) was the preeminent chronicler of high society, capturing the world’s elite in sun-drenched luxury from the 1950s to the 1990s. His work immortalized Hollywood icons, European aristocrats, and global socialites, shaping the aesthetic of aspirational living. Each Estate Edition print is an official release from the Slim Aarons Archive, selected for its exceptional quality and historical significance. Aarons began his career as a combat photographer in World War II, earning a Purple Heart. Reflecting on that experience, he famously remarked that the only beach worth landing on was one adorned with beautiful people...

Beverly Hills Hotel The sign on the side of the Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in California, 1957. Gorgeous print measuring an large 40 x 40" inches / ca 101 x 101 cm’s....

A limited edition (out of 25) black and white photographic print. Framed with a black or white box frame and floated to the backboard. The dimensions of 33.5 x 47.2 cm is that of the...

This is a 39.5 x 59 inches archival giclée black and white print on archival exhibition paper. It is part of a limited edition of 6 plus 2 AP. Signed and numbered in the back. An edition of 10 and an edition of 20, smaller in size, are also available. This photograph is part of J. L. Fievet’s CV series, shot during the early months of 2020, during which New York City was in total lock down because of the Covid-19 emergency. Fievet spent day in and day out roaming the streets, documenting the breathtaking change that transformed the city. Fievet’s iconic photographs tried to seize the stark contrast between the surreal aspect of NYC empty streets with the resiliance of New Yorkers who kept pursuing normalcy within a unique situation. This photograph shows a deserted West Broadway...

This is a 39.5 x 59 inches archival giclée black and white print on archival exhibition paper. It is part of a limited edition of 6 plus 2 AP. Signed and numbered in the back. An edition of 10 and an edition of 20, smaller in size, are also available. This photograph is part of J. L. Fievet’s CV series, shot during the early months of 2020, during which New York City was in total lock down because of the Covid-19 emergency. Fievet spent day in and day out roaming the streets, documenting the breathtaking change that transformed the city. Fievet’s iconic photographs tried to seize the stark contrast between the surreal aspect of NYC empty streets with the resiliance of New Yorkers who kept pursuing normalcy within a unique situation. This joyful portrait...

'Channel One Recording Studio Jamaica' by Alain Le Garsmeur Channel 1, Reggae recording studios, Kingston, Jamaica 1983. A gorgeously observed scen...

Gwendolyn Brooks on the back steps of her home in Chicago, 1960. Complimentary dealer shipping to your framer, worldwide. Undercurrent Projects is p...

'Beverly Hills Hotel' Beautiful 1950's cars parked outside the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in California, 1957. Gorgeous print measuring a large 30 x 30 inches ...

'Megachess' (Slim Aarons Estate Edition) A giant game of chess in Saint Lucia, in the Lesser Antilles, February 1993. A simply fabulous s...

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Walking Lulu - 2001, 20x30cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid Slide. Certificate and Signature label. Not mounted. 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...

Campbell's Soup, iconic British architecture of their first UK factory. Photograph by Richard Heeps. This artwork is a limited edition of 25, gloss photographic print, accompanied b...

An iconic photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono outsitde the Dakota Hotel in Manhattan. The photo was taken November 21st, 1980. The print is signed, titled and numbered 5/15 in ma...

Lord Fauntleroy KCMO-240926-15 2024 Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemuehle Baryta Rag 315gsm Size: 20 x 9.34 inches (60.96 x 60.96cm) Edition: 17 Signed, titled and dated on label COA...

Lord Fauntleroy KCMO-240926-12 2024 Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemuehle Baryta Rag 315gsm Size: 9.34 x 20 inches (60.96 x 60.96cm) Edition: 17 Signed, titled and dated on label COA...

Lord Fauntleroy KCMO-240926-07 2024 Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemuehle Baryta Rag 315gsm Size: 9.34 x 20 inches (60.96 x 60.96cm) Edition: 17 Signed, titled and dated on label COA...

Untitled (9/11) - 2001 Edition of 5, 38x37cm. Archival C-Print, on Archive Fuji Chrystal Paper, based on the Polaroid. Artist inventory number: 1546. Signature label and certifi...

Ancient Bridge Views IV (Stay) - 2006, 20x20cm, sold out Edition of 5, Artist Proof 2/2. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. artist Inventory # 2186.13. Not mounted. Torsten Scheid, “Fotografie, Kunst, Kino. Revisited.”, FilmDienst 3/2006, page 11-13

 Photography Art Cinema. Revisited Stay expands a traditional connection through new facets Interwoven between the media of photography and film is a veritable mesh-work of technical, motific, metaphorical and personal interrelationships. Extending from photo-film which, as in La Jetée by Chris Marker (France, 1962) is a montage of single, unmoving photographs all the way to the portrayal of photographic motifs in Hollywood cinema―most recently in Memento (USA, 2000) and One hour photo (USA, 2002)―is the range of filmic-photographic interactions on the one hand, and from the adaption of modes of cinematic production to the imitation of film stills on the other. For instance, with the legendary Untitled Film Stills (1978) of the American artist Cindy Sherman, who later made her debut as a film director with Office Killer (USA, 1997) and thereby, like many others, changed sides: Wim Wenders, Robert Frank and Larry Clark are doubtlessly the most successful of these photographic-filmic border crossers. This brief survey provides only a vague indication of the dimensions of this intermedial field, which in fact extends much further and is constantly being cultivated. Also as a motif in film, photography has experienced a historical transformation: Photographers were once considered to be technicians who mastered a craft but never achieved the status of artists. Photographer-figures were caught in the allure of beautiful appearance, incapable of penetrating to the actual essence of things. Such depth was reserved for literature or painting. When photography in film touched upon the sphere of art, then most often as its contrasting model, as the metaphor for a superficial access to the world. Coming to mind are Fred Astaire as a singing fashion photographer in Stanley Donen’s musical film Funny Face (USA, 1957), or the restless lifestyle-photographer in Michelangelo Antonioni’s genre-classic Blow up (GB, 1966). For the doubting Thomas...

Googie sign photography at its finest, the iconic and memorable Space Age Lodge, in Gila Bend, Arizona. Photograph by Richard Heeps from his Dream in Colour series, looking like a pa...

VR's Trailer Park (Ghosts of Route 99) - 2021 Route 99 used to cut right through Bakersfield. The streets were filled with Motels for the weary traveler. In the 1970s the highway was moved, killing this section of town. In some places only the signs remain. 40x40cm, Edition of 7, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid. Signed on back with Certificate. Not mounted. Erin Dougherty...

"Wherever You Look, You See the Chrysler Building: Brooklyn Heights " is captured by Photographer Mitchell and is part of his exhibition, Mitchell Funk Photographs The Chrysler Build...

"Closed Windows (Upper East Side)" is a color photograph on Etching Rag archival paper. It's a signed Edition of 20, available in sizes 16x24, 11x17 and 8x12 inches. Another strong photograph by way of close observation, and typical of the artist there are only a few elements at play but they are powerfully at play. With the building in shadow against a soft blue sky milky with clouds, the two bricked-in windows are caught in a fleeting moment of sunlight. Shooting on the streets of New York, looking up and looking for often-missed city/sky collisions, Bob Krasner...

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Walking Lulu - diptych - 2001, 20x55cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid Slide. Signature l...

Elote (Lost in Time) - 2019 Lost in Time The desert is not a lifeless dusty place. Abandoned places. Waiting…Suspended in time. 20x24cm, Edition of 7, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid. Signed on back with Certificate. Not mounted. Erin Dougherty...

Drive-In (American Depression) - 2017 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 20...

'Palm Beach Street' by Slim Aarons Cars parked on a tree-lined street in Palm Beach, Florida, circa 1953. How typically 'Slim style' this photograph is. Beautiful and iconic 1950's...

High Voltage (American Depression) - 2017 “How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?” ― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath 24x20cm, Edition of ...

Industrial Wasteland (American Depression) - 2017 “How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?” ― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath 24x20cm, Edi...

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Walking Lulu - 2001, 20x83cm, 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 darkroom. 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...

Stefanie Schneider's work was used for Marc Forster's movie 'Stay'. Featuring Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling. Naomi and Ryan were both portraying artists and Stefanie's ...

Downtown LA, 2005, 20x24cm, Edition 2/10, digital C-Print, based on Polaroid, Signature label and Certificate, artist Inventory No. 861.01. Not mounted....

Afternoon Drifter (The Last Picture Show) - 2006 58x57cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Archive Fuji Chrystal Paper, based on t...

The Millennial Falcon (Sidewinder) - 2005 38.5x38cm, Edition 1/10. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid. Artist Inven...

Stefanie Schneider's work was used for Marc Forster's movie 'Stay'. Featuring Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling. Naomi and Ryan were both portraying artists and Stefanie's ...

Car Wash (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 50x50cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist inventory N...

The 'Miami Skin Series' it’s not a traditional collection of photos about the architecture of Miami and Miami Beach. It’s rather a quick journey between its own skin from the Art Dec...

Atlanta Skyline, 2019 by Ying Chen From the series "Lost In Transition". Archival pigment print Image size: 80 in. H x 60 in. W Edition of 5 + 1AP Unfr...

Drive-in (Bombay Beach), 2018, Edition 1/7 plus 2 Artist Proofs, based on an original Polaroid, Digital C-print, not mounted. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventor...