Stefanie Schneider Photography

American Pie (Oxana's 30th Birthday) -2007, from the 29 Palms, CA project - 38x36cm, Edition of 10. digital C-Print print, based on a Polaroid, mounted...

Palm Springs Palm Trees XI (Californication) - 2019 40x40cm, Edition of 10, plus two artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Ar...

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

The DJ (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 50x50cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Mounted on Dibond with matte UV-Protection. Signed on back and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 16346. In Stefanie Schneider's evocative piece "Her Last Call," she presents a poignant scene featuring the talented actor Heather Megan Christie. The composition centers around a captivating image of Christie holding a red rotary phone...

Her last Call II (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 78x77cm, Edition 3/5, Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory # 16495.03. Not mounted. Featuring Heather Megan Christie. Offered is a piece from the movie: The Girl behind the White Picket Fence A tale told with blemished and expired Polaroid film about the hopes and dreams of a newly orphaned girl after losing her parents who lived in the Californian desert in a vintage Spartan travel-trailer. -filmed with Polaroid film stock and Super-8 footage, overlaid with poetic voice-over monologue - this feature film creates a dynamic kaleidoscope of words and pictures, a dreamy tale that channels Terrence Malick, Gus Van Sant, and pages torn from a lonely girl's journal (Palms Springs life magazine / Caroline Ryder) Stefanie Schneider By Caroline Ryder Travel up a bumpy dirt road in Morongo Valley, the trail strewn with rocks, and you’ll come upon a gigantic 1950s trailer in pristine condition, ringed by a white picket fence, with cottontail rabbits hopping among neat little rose bushes that bloom in spite of the broiling desert heat. Inside the trailer are period accents—a vintage radio, vintage fridge, little crocheted doilies and dusty gilt-framed photographs. It’s a surreal home-sweet-home, an Americana fantasy as imagined by German artist and experimental filmmaker Stefanie Schneider whose work is so inspired by the desert landscape, she made it her home in 2005. “There’s a completely different light here than in Germany, a beautiful light,” says Schneider, whose 10-acre property in Morongo is dotted with vintage trailers. They surround her midcentury home, and serve as sets for her photo shoots or as guest lodgings for her friends from Hollywood and Berlin. “But what I really love about the desert is the desolation,” she continues. “The sense of hope for something that might or might not come. It’s easy to see our dreams projected in the desert.” Famed for shooting trailer park chic fine art photographs exclusively on vintage Polaroid film, Schneider recently completed her most ambitious project to date—a feature film made entirely of Polaroid stills (4000 images in total), the story set around her magnificent 1950s trailer. The film, called “The Girl Behind The White Picket Fence” tells the story of a broken-hearted girl who lives in the trailer. Her name is Heather, and she is played by model Heather Megan Christie, girlfriend of actor Joaquin Phoenix, and former partner of Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis, with whom she has a son. Heather stars opposite Kyle Larson (who plays ‘Hank’), a real-life gypsy fisherman who catches crab in Alaska when he’s not surfing in Southern California. Neither of the two had ever acted before, and never in the history of movie making has a director shot a film entirely on Polaroid film. “There was great difficulty shooting a film this way,” says Schneider, who, with her long straight hair, wide innocent eyes and thick-framed glasses, conjures an art-house Gretel. “If I had used a regular camera I would have had 36 exposures per minute, much faster and easier than using the old Polaroid camera which takes a long time to shoot one frame. Also, sometimes it doesn’t shoot at the exact moment you think it’s going to—but that’s really great because then you miss the perfect moment…and often those are the best shots.” Individually, the Polaroid photographs that comprise 29 PALMS, CA stand alone, but together and in sequence, filmed with super 8 and 16mm film stock and overlaid with poetic voice-over monologues, they create a dynamic kaleidoscope of words and pictures, a dreamy tale that channels Terrence Malick. Gus Van Sant, and pages torn from a lonely girl’s journal. The idea to shoot a movie in this way came about in 2004, when Schneider was working with leading German director Mark Forster (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace) on his film Stay. She had met Forster at director Wim Wender’s birthday party in Hollywood. A few years later, Forster asked Schneider to shoot Polaroids of scenes from Stay as he filmed; he used those photographs for dream and memory sequences in the movie. For the first time, Schneider saw her Polaroids strung together in sequence, moving with rhythm like a flipbook, in the context of a story. When Forster urged her to consider making a feature film using...

Lipstick (Sidewinder) - 2005 20 x 24 cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid, signature label and certificate. Artist Inventory 3045. Not mounted. sidewinder "private history turned into an intimate mythology of elemental fantasies where reality is perceived through a veil of psychedelic memories and unconscious projections. such is a collection of passions and dreams, an uncanny diary of ephemeral narratives and mental intensities in Stefanie Schneider’s painterly photographs...

Untitled (Cathy and Shannon) - 2004 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 481...

Judith (Suburbia) - 2004 50x60cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid, Signed on verso with Certificate, Artist inventory number: 1698. Not mounted. This proje...

Desert Center (Stranger than Paradise) - 2000 Edition of 10, 48x60cm. Archival Print, based on the Polaroid. Mounted on dibond with matte UV-Protection. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 534. Published in Stranger than Paradise, Hatje Cantz (monograph) Stefanie Schneider: A Discovery on Polaroid. An essay by Eugen Blume How is it that the photographic works of Stefanie Schneider do not allow anything other than one single association, namely that of America? Because they were taken in America itself? That fact alone would not yet be a compelling argument. Many photographs of America possess a reckless ambivalence which allows even the different country of their own particular creator to seem so similar as to be confused with America itself. Does this ambiguity have something to do with the ongoing, accelerating Americanization of the entire world? Or is it simply connected with our personal clichés which we attribute to a country the size of North America as valid expressions of its very essence, thereupon negligently allowing it not only to dwindle down into any size whatever, but also to expand to a great extent, from Germany by way of Luxembourg right through to Japan? Now it is certainly true that the figures of Thelma and Louise in the desert do not represent an American reality, not even after their resurrection as Radha and Max in the series 29 Palms from 1999. Strangely enough, it is nature which allows this utterly artificial scene to grow into an American verity. The harsh sunlight in the barren landscape establishes the fundamental tone out of which the women emerge in excessive hysteria from beneath their colored wigs. It is inherently absurd to celebrate the feminine aspect in the middle of a mercilessly inhospitable environment. The image of the two women is a monument of resistance, the meaningful assertion of a lifestyle which stands in contradiction to each and every convention. The pictorial structure and the captured movement along the edge of the format are a means of blending the glaring luminosity with the plot in a manner which perhaps functions successfully only in the “simple” instant technique of the Polaroid. Stefanie Schneider’s pictorial narratives are striking in their formal elegance. She utilizes the chemical faults of the Polaroids, their tendency towards overexposure and double-images as a sovereignly controlled means of artistic design. The defects become, as it were, metaphorical levels which plumb depths lying far beneath the surface. The overly bright colors and schlieren seek out the uncanny; they provide a counterweight to a narration that is deliberately kept superficial. They tell of an invisible strand. They illuminate, in the truest sense of the word, underground processes. Although we are familiar with a series featuring American flags which could not indicate the site of its narrations any more clearly, nevertheless there remains a fundamental doubt as to whether the initially described association with America is identical with that which we deem to be America in a geographical sense. Although I have in the meantime been in America several times, in both South and North America, deep down I remain uncertain as to whether the New World actually exists. Columbus’ error of continuing to believe, even when having arrived on land, that he was encountering the India which was the actual goal of his journey has burrowed down deep into the European unconscious as a cultural convention. Peter Bichsel’s amusing story “Amerika gibt es nicht” (There is no America) still remains today an undeniable truth: America’s northern half is a film, not a continent. Everything which signifies the U.S.A. – from the Indians, whose most noble savages were invented in Europe, all the way to September 11th and the subsequent war in Iraq, the aliens and the revival of the dinosaurs, the terminators as governors and presidents as actors and vice versa, the electric chairs, the godfather Marlon Brando and the eternal singer Bob Dylan, the neurotic Woody Allen, Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol – all this is an invention of the media. Everything that I know about America has been conveyed to me by Hollywood films. My trip into this fictional wonderland, this country where nothing seems impossible, began with a landing at Kennedy Airport, along with a list of questions investigating my existence up to that point in time and inquiring whether I belonged or belong to any Communist organization. There went by three long hours of waiting, without my having seen anything that was actually real, among variously colored passengers until there was a call to board my flight to Houston, Texas, the destination of my first trip to America. The airplane traveled for an endless stretch of time just to reach the take-off runway and thereby crossed bridges under which dense auto traffic flowed ceaselessly towards somewhere, like a never-ending caravan. My little onboard window was nothing more than a monitor tuned to one of the many road movies at which I gazed in boredom. Finally the machine came to a standstill and the massive doors were opened, warm air hung heavily amid functional concrete buildings and a few palms: I was in the southern region of North America. In front of the airport was the usual scene from the beginning of a film viewed hundreds of times: yellow cabs with black drivers. Along the highway to Houston, seen from car windows that were once again nothing more than monitors, there rose up upon high poles to the right and left vastly oversized, widescreen-formatted billboards advertising everything that for a long time now we in Europe have internamericalized: Coca-Cola in an immediate love-hate relationship to Pepsi, the successful taste plagiarizer, McDonald’s, cornflakes. Concrete streets above and below me, in the distance the skyline of Houston set against the background of the desert: high-quality Cinemascope. Spontaneously there came to mind the first scenes of Tarkovsky’s Solaris, that never-ending stretch of concrete, filmed from within the automobile which, remotely controlled, brings its passenger somewhere, anywhere, just not into reality. I didn’t understand the first Texan whom I met; the ponderous dialect, spoken in the interior of his mouth, was not compatible with my knowledge of English. America was not only a film but also a collection of clichés. In the evening I attended the opening of an museum exhibition, which was the actual reason for my journey: rich women wearing fur coats in approximately thirty degrees Centigrade; first the buffet, then the art; no wordily wandering speeches, but rather everything economically tailored to momentary pleasure and external appearance. Modern Houston was nothing more than a city of offices; the last skyscrapers in the series already end in the desert sand; some are nailed up and carry signs of warning: “Contaminated with Asbestos.” In the bus I am the only white person among variously hued immigrants from South America or scions of long-established families of former slaves, and I myself am marveled at like a strange, stray soul. In search of the DeMenil Collection amid endless single-family dwellings, there was the usual action scene: an identity check, police vehicles outfitted with sirens and sporting double, revolving lights upon their roofs, the role of the sheriff well cast, a successful sequence filmed on the first take and put right in the can. I am not given any trouble with my status as a European, such as can easily be seen from my passport. The whole atmosphere is friendly, suffused with an almost unbelievable amicality. The colleagues in the Museum of Fine Arts, an astounding universal museum with artworks ranging from antiquity all the way to the present and a Mies van der Rohe building extension, are enthusiastic about my idea of traveling on to California as soon as possible. Beneath me a nature film presented by National Geographic, the Grand Canyon, red cliffs of incredible dimensions, somewhere Death Valley and Hollywood, to which I owe so much. In San Francisco friends are waiting for me at the airport, two American biographies such as are only written here. Everything is just as I know it, the soundtrack is right on the money: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and up further in the surf, the Beach Boys. The Golden Gate Bridge in fog, the wonderful district of Sausalito, and far across the bay the city of Oakland. A paradise of hippies, twenty degrees Centigrade as the average annual temperature. William Seward Burroughs is reading in a bookshop, Alan Ginsburg, and somewhere Patti Smith is singing. I do not intend to write here about my next destination, New York City, not about the wonderful people who were my hosts, not about Mildred the pianist, who worked with John Cage, not about her husband, the painter who was friends with Alexander Calder… When I recall this first trip to America, my images are strangely blurred in their colors, and the sharply focused photographs which I have kept among many useless ones convey nothing of that which remains in my head. I think back to the magical places, just like to the inhospitable ones, from a certain aesthetic perspective, and it is this very aesthetic which I rediscover in the pictures of Stefanie Schneider. Tales of America, a discovery on Polaroid. Basically we know nothing about how our remembered images in fact look; we believe that we recall pictures and we tell of images which nocturnal dreams implant in our brains, but we would have great difficulty in specifying their actual form. From time to time we consider ourselves to have seen distinct pictures, but mostly we think of blurred appearances, more of shadows than of sharp contours. For her part, Stefanie Schneider as a native German sees her chosen country of residence as if in a dream. She stages a land which does not exist, a land of visions and spirits. During 2005 in the film Hitchhiker and in the photo series Sidewinder, she tells about love in terms of the hippie clichés of the 1960s: the long-haired girl with no makeup together with the preacher in a trailer amid the eternal heat, God’s warm canopy above California, Jack Daniels as the celebratory wine of the mass, the Colt revolver...

Nipple - Bathtime IV (29 Palms, CA) 1999, 40x40cm, Edition 1/10, Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist inventory ...

Hans and Penelope (Immaculate Springs) - 1998 Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs. 58x185cm installed, 58x56cm each. 3 Analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist, based on 3 Pola...

Memory Sequence (Stay) - 2006 Polaroid - Unique Piece 1/1, 8.8 x 7.5 cm (image area) 10.6 x 8.6 cm ( including white Polaroid frame) Artist Inv. #24851. Signed on verso. Not moun...

Stefanie Schneider's Minis 'Moonwalk' (29 Palms, CA), 2006 signed and signature brand on verso Lambda digital Color Photograph based on a Polaroid Polaroid sized open Editions 1999-...

No Causes (Ensign Broderick record Shoot 'Blood Crush') - Bombay Beach, CA - 2019 48x47cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature l...

An Image of Life (Ensign Broderick record Shoot 'Blood Crush') - Bombay Beach, CA - 2019 48x47cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Sign...

'Untitled' (The Last Picture Show) - 2005, Edition 2/10, 20x20cm, Based on a Polaroid, Certificate and signature label, Not mounted, Artist inve...

Bombay Beach Pirates (Ensign Broderick record Shoot 'Blood Crush') - Bombay Beach, CA - 2019 30x40cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. ...

Magic Hour (Musica Poetica) - 1999 Edition 3/10, 44x59cm. Analog C-Print, hand-printed and enlarged by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Certificat...

You turn from Me (Till Death do us Part) 2005, 20x20cm, Edition 1/10, digital C-Print print, based on a Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 9555.01. Not...

The Girl III (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013, 128x126cm, Edition 2/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Archive Crystal Paper, matte surface, bas...

Jimi Hendrix Palm Trees (Californication) - 2016 20x20cm, Edition 7/10. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signatur...

Making out in Car (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 50x50cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print print, based on the Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label arti...

Approaching Train (Wastelands) - 2003 Edition of 3, 126x166cm Analog C-Print, hand-printed and by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid. Artist inventory ...

The Girl II (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) 38x36cm, Edition 1/10 from 2011 analog C-Print, hand-printed the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, matte surface, based on a...

Dream girl (Stranger than Paradise) - 2000 Edition of 10 3 x 58x56 x 0.1 cm, 58 x 188 cm installed. 3 Analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist. based on the 3 Polaroids. Signat...

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 ...

Duet (Till Death do us Part) - 2016 50x50cm, Edition of 10. Archival C- Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist inventory number: 9441. Not mounted....

Stillness (Zuma Beach) - 2004 48x47cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #20433. N...

Stefanie Schneider Polaroid sized unlimited Mini 'Sam' - 2006 - featuring Ewan McGregor signed in front, not mounted. 1 Digital Color Ph...

Blue Cadillac (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 68x90cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #607....

Everything put Together (Suburbia) - 2004 50x50cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Signature label with Certificate. Artist inventory #19313. Not mounte...

Untitled 03 (Saigon) - 2003 58x56cm, Edition of 5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by an artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, matte surface, based on the Polaroid. Artist invento...

Sunset (Sidewinder) - 2006 Polaroid - Unique Piece 1/1, 8.8 x 7.5 cm (image area) 10.6 x 8.6 cm ( including white Polaroid frame) Artist Inv. #23636. Signed on verso. Not mounted...

Day Worker (American Depression) - 1999 Edition of 10, 58x56cm. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, on Crystal Fuji Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid. Artist inventory...

LAST EDITION 'Radha Pink' (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition of 10, Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid, not mou...

Streetcorner (Stranger than Paradise) - 2003 58x56cm each, 58x190cm together, Edition 6/10, 3 Analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper. based on t...

Pool Side (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 Edition 5/5, 20x20cm. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 619. Signature label and Certificate. Not mounted. A Ge...

Hidden Valley (Wastelands) - 2003 57x56cm, Edition of 5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No 1...

Brooklyn Bridge Sunset (Stay) - 2006 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 2572. Not mounted. featuring Ryan Gosling. Stefanie Schneider's art work was used for the Marc Forster movie 'Stay'. featuring Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling. Naomi and Ryan were both portraying artists and Stefanie's art was the art both created during the movie. Stefanie's images were also used for Ryan Gosling's memory sequence, for the end titles, for edits in between and as art paintings hanging in several scenes within the movie. Torsten Scheid, “Fotografie, Kunst, Kino. Revisited.”, Film...

Zabriskie Point (Stranger than Paradise) - PART II - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. ...

Skylark (Stranger than Paradise) - 1997 43x59cm, Edition 5/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature La...

Untitled (Traintracks) - The last Picture Show - 2004 38x37cm. Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Arti...

The Muse (29 Palms, CA) - 2009 38x37cm, Edition of 5, Artist Proof 1/2, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the Artist, mounted on Aluminum with matte UV-Protection, based on the Pol...

Max by the Pool (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 Edition 7/10, 67x60cm including the white 'Polaroid' frame. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid, mounted on Al...

Farewell (Haley and the Birds) - 2013 70x80cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and certificate. Artist inventory No...

Thunderbird Motel (The Last Picture Show) - 2005 Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. 50x50cm. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid Signature label and Certificate. Artist i...

Roys (California Badlands) - 2010 20x24cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 10946. Not mounted. The w...

10525 (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999, Edition 9/10, 5 analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist, based on 5 Polaroids. each 57x56 cm, installed with gaps 57x308cm. Certific...

'There is no Forever' (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 20x24cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print print, based on the Polaroid Certificate and Signature label artist Inventory No. 9080...

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

The Map (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 20x24cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, artist Inventory Nr. 7709.01 Certificate and signature label, Not mounted, featuring Udo Kier. ...

'Penelope' from the movie Immaculate Springs - 1998 58x57cm, Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid. Signature Label ...

Crossfire (Californication) - 2019 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory Number 18148. Not mounted. ...

Memories of Green I, triptych, - 2003 Edition of 5, each 58x56cm, installed with gaps 58x178cm, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on ...

Whirling silently in Space (Heavenly Falls) - 2016 100x125 cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Mounted on Aluminium with matte UV-Protection. Artist invent...

Stellar (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 featuring Radha Mitchell 20x24cm, Edition of 10/10. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inven...

Transformation (Suburbia) - 2004 20x24cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid, Not mounted, Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 1675.01. Th...

Untitled (9/11) - 2001 Edition of 5, 38x37cm. Archival C-Print, on Archive Fuji Chrystal Paper, based on the Polaroid. Artist inventory number: 1542. Signature label and certifi...