California - Photography

Edition 25 Also available in 101 x 127 cm / 40 x 50 inch, Edition 10 Black and white portrait of famous actress Meryl Streep. From personality portrait...

Desert Junkyard II (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition of 10 analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist based on the Polaroid Artist inventory #319.02 Mounted on Aluminum Dese...

Hand printed by the artist. Roman Loranc is no longer printing. Edition 2/40 Limited Edition Printed 2007 (vintage) Excellent condition Framed in walnut brown metal.

Rare original autographed black and white photograph of Argentinian president Juan Perón, dedicated to Elizabeth Lewis (Bess Huggins Lewis), by an unkn...

Underwater nude photograph of a girl dancing in a swimming pool. The dark pool is filled with sharp sunbeams. Some mysterious light ornaments cover the pool bottom and inner water su...

East of Eden 2019, 24x20 cm, Edition 1/7 plus 2 Artist Proofs, digital C-Print based on a Polaroid, not mounted. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2019 -...

Hand printed by artist. Cibachrome highly archival photograph. Stunning colors. Framed in slim black metal with high grade plexiglass.

Sprawl - 2020 37x50cm, 
Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid. Signature label with certificate. Artist inventory PL2020-874. Not ...

Palm Springs Palm Trees (Californication) - 2023 20x20cm. Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist I...

John Casado - Untitled 20249, figurative black and white female nude. 2002 - Unique lith silver gelatin photographic print. image = 22 3/4 x 18 3/4 or 57.8 x 47.6 centimeters / pa...

An underwater almost monochrome photograph of a naked young women wrapped in fishing net. Original gallery quality archival pigment print on archival paper signed by the artist, fur...

I see you, 2016, Edition 1/7 plus 2 Artist Proofs Based on the Polaroid Digital C-print, not mounted. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2017-114 This p...

Iconic portrait photograph by midcentury society photographer Slim Aarons, capturing young Jackie Kennedy (Jacqueline Onassis) (1929 - 1994) wife of Senator Jack Kennedy, at a 'April...

Never gonna cry again - 2020, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proof Archival Print, based on the Polaroid. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2020-844. Not m...

"Nectars Embrace" Nude Photography 24" x 36" inch Edition 1/7 by Aaron Mcpolin Medium: Archival Giclee Print Available sizes: Edition of 15 16" x 24" inch Edition of 7 24" x 36" in...

'Bombay Nights' part of the series 'A girl called N.' 2019, 20x20cm, Edition 1/7 plus 2 Artist Proofs, digital C-Print based on a Polaroid, not mounted. Signed on the back and with c...

This is a contemporary photograph of a Tiger by Shane Russeck. Printed on archival paper using archival inks Shane Russeck is a modern day photographer, adventurer, and explorer. ...

The Tears we cried (Till Death do us Part) - 2007, 20x20cm, Edition of 10. Digital C-Print print, based on a Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 8583. N...

Weight of the World - 2017 30x24cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid. Signature label with certificate Artist inventory PL2017-...

This is a contemporary color photograph of Northern California Wild Mustangs. THIS COLOR IMAGE IS A 1STDIBS EXCLUSIVE "They represent the ultimate expression of American freedom" 40...

"Apriel" captures a serene underwater moment in striking black and white. This fine art underwater photograph showcases delicate interplay between light, shadow, and movement as hair...

Illustrated in Contact Warhol: Photography Without End, edited by Peggy Phelan and Richard Meyer. An iconic book celebrating Warhol's most famous photogr...

The Art of Seduction, 2023. Cyanotype Unique Variant Print Limited Edition of 7 Cyanotype gives a contemporary edge to this flirty dialogue made from vintage magazines, and brings conversation to the counterculture of the "swinging sixties". + Cyanotype hand-printed on Arches BFK Rives French watercolor paper + Deckled Edges on all four sides + Signed and editioned on front in pencil + Letter of Authenticity + Printed in Los Angeles, CA WHAT IS A CYANOTYPE? cyan = blue type = print Cyanotype is a historic photographic processes, invented in 1842 and used by Anna Atkins–the first female photographer. The process involves coating watercolor paper with light-sensitive chemistry made of iron salts. Photographic negatives are laid on top, exposed in the sunlight, and then washed in water to develop into the deep Prussian-blue unique to cyanotypes. Brings a moment of beauty and conversation to any space. ABOUT THE ARTIST: Alexandra DeFurio...

Artist: Richard Corman Year: 1983 Title: Madonna Beauty Wall Edition Details: Archival pigment print on 100% cotton fine art paper, signed and numbered in the margins by the artis...

"Presentation of Sensuality" Nude Photography 45x30 in Ed. 1/7 by Larsen Sotelo Not framed. Ships in a tube Comes with COA Available sizes: Edition of 24: 27" x 18" inch Edition...

Jungle Boy (Back in the 80's) - 1999 48x46cm, Edition of 10. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventor...

Wild Mustangs just Carson Nevada 40x55 Printed on archival paper using archival inks Unsigned print Framing available. Inquire for rates. Shane Russeck is a modern day photograp...

A Vision you can't Capture, no 03 (29 Palms, CA) - 2007 37x49cm, Edition 2/5, analog C-Print printed on Fuji Archive Paper, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid, Not mo...

Untitled (Nr. 2790) Photography 18" x 24" in Ed. 2/20 by Rowan Daly Unframed - ships rolled in a tube Ben Cope + Rowan Daly Off the Grid Off the Grid is the culmination of a six...

In the series 'She Disappeared into Complete Silence' (2014) Mona Kuhn takes a new direction into abstraction. She turns to a highly austere and restrained reductionist geometry and distilled formal purity, connecting the interior to the exterior, the visible to the hidden. These reflections cause one to linger, as they merge to create a dynamic equilibrium of tension, spaces and rythms. AD14558 (She Disappeared into Complete Silence) 60" x 45" / 152cm x 114cm edition of 8 + 2AP 40" x 30" / 102cm x 76cm edition of 8 + 2AP limited edition photograph is printed under artist supervision and accompanied by signed artist certificate: artist signature labels are 8x10 in size signed, editioned, dated and titled by the artist, and stamped for authenticity label __________________ About the artist Acclaimed for her contemporary depictions, Kuhn is considered a leading artist in the world of figurative discourse. Throughout a career spanning more than twenty years, the underlying theme of her work is her reflection on humanity’s longing for spiritual connection and solidarity. As she solidified her photographic style, Kuhn created a notable approach to the nude by developing friendships with her subjects, and employing a range of playful visual strategies that use natural light and minimalist settings to evoke a sublime sense of comfort between the human figure and its environment. Her work is natural, restful, and a reinterpretation of the nude in the canon of contemporary art. For the past two decades, the Los-Angeles based artist's works have been shown steadily, revealing an astonishing consistency in technique, of subject and of purpose. In 2001, Kuhn’s photographs were first seen by an influential audience during the exhibition at Charles Cowles Gallery in Chelsea, New York. Kuhn’s distinct aesthetic has propelled her as one of the most collectible contemporary art photographers—her work is in private and public collections worldwide and she is represented by galleries across the United States, Europe and Asia. Kuhn was born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1969, of German descent. In 1989, Kuhn moved to the US and earned her BA from The Ohio State University, before furthering her studies at the San Francisco Art Institute. She is currently an independent scholar at The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Occasionally, Mona teaches at UCLA and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Mona Kuhn’s first monograph, Photographs, was debuted by Steidl in 2004; followed by Evidence (2007), Native (2010), Bordeaux Series (2011), Private (2014), and She Disappeared into Complete Silence (2018/19). In addition, Kuhn's monograph titled Bushes and Succulents has been published by Stanley/Barker Editions, with a debut at Jeu de Paume in Paris, In 2021, Thames & Hudson published a career retrospective titled Works. Kuhn's most recent publication Kings Road with Steidl accompanies a multi-dimensional museum traveling exhibition shown in Europe and the US. Mona Kuhn’s work is in private and public collections worldwide, including The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Hammer Museum, Perez Art Museum Miami, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Kiyosato Museum in Japan. Kuhn's work has been exhibited at The Louvre Museum and Le Bal in Paris; The Whitechapel Gallery and Royal Academy of Arts in London; Musée de l’Elysée in Switzerland; Leopold Museum in Vienna Austria, The Polygon Gallery in Vancouver Canada, Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan and Australian Centre for Photography. Mona Kuhn lives and works in Los Angeles. __________________ Solo Exhibitions 2025 Mona Kuhn: Works, Museum of Contemporary Art, Malaga, Spain 2024 Mona Kuhn: The Schindler House, A Love Affair, Galerie XII, Los Angeles Mona Kuhn: Between Modernism and Surrealism, Houk Gallery, New York, NY 2023 Mona Kuhn: Kings Road, Galerie XII, Paris, France Mona Kuhn: Kings Road, Kunsthaus-Göttingen, Germany Mona Kuhn: Kings Road, Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta 2022 Mona Kuhn: 835 Kings Road, Art, Design & Architecture Museum, Santa Barbara 2021 Mona Kuhn: Works, Galerie XII, Paris Mona Kuhn: Works, Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York Mona Kuhn: Works, Flowers Gallery, London Mona Kuhn: Works, Galerie XII, Los Angeles + Paris + Shanghai Mona Kuhn: 835 Kings Road, Art, Design and Architecture Museum, Santa Barbara 2020 Still Light, Jardin du Bra'haus, Montée du Château, Clervaux, Luxembourg Mona Kuhn: Early Depictions, Flowers Gallery, London Mona Kuhn: Intimate, UP Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan 2019 Bushes and Succulents, Euqinom Gallery, San Francisco Mona Kuhn: She Disappeared, Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta Mona Kuhn: Experimental, Fruit Factory, Durham Triangle, North Carolina 2018 Mona Kuhn: New Works, Part II, Galerie Catherine Hug, Paris, France 2017 Mona Kuhn: The First Chapter, Euqinom Projects, San Francisco, California 2016 Mona Kuhn: New Works, Galerie Catherine Hug, Paris, France Acido Dorado, Galeria Pilar Serra, Madrid, Spain Mona Kuhn: New Works, Euqinom Gallery, San Francisco, California 2015 Private, Ravestijn Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Private, Galerie Ernst Hilger, Vienna, Austria 2014 Acido Dorado, Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York Acido Dorado, Flowers Gallery, London, UK Private, Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia 2012 Bordeaux Series, Galerie Particuliere, Paris, France Native, Galeria Pilar Serra, Madrid, Spain Bordeaux Series, Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia Bordeaux, Flowers Gallery, New York Native, Brancolini Grimaldi, Florence, Italy 2011 Bordeaux, Flowers Gallery, London, UK 2010 Native, Flowers Gallery, London, UK Native, Flowers Gallery, New York 2009 Native, M+B Gallery, Los Angeles, California Native, Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia 2008 Evidence, Jarach Gallery, Venice, Italy 2007 Evidence, Scott Nichols Gallery, San Francisco, California Evidence, Charles Cowles Gallery, New York Mona Kuhn, Estiarte Gallery, Madrid, Spain Evidence, Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia Less Than Innocent, M+B Gallery, Los Angeles, California 2005 Mona Kuhn – Recent Color Work, Charles Cowles Gallery, New York Mona Kuhn-Close, Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia Unbounded Youth, Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, California 2004 Mona Kuhn-Color, Camerawork, Berlin, Germany New Work, G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle, Washington Corporeal Space, Galerie F5.6, Munique, Germany Mona Kuhn - Color Photographs, Scott Nichols Gallery, San Francisco, California Still Memory, PhotoEye...

A contemporary photograph of the "Top Gun" soundtrack. This is s the first release in the much anticipated series "The Music" by pop Artists Destro These iconic tapes have become mor...

Grip - 2020 20x20cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs, Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2020-839. Not mounted. ...

Absynthe - 2021 20x25cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs, Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid, Signature label and certificate. Artist inventory PL2021-1020. Not mounted. ...

Male Nude in Bathroom (29 Palms, CA), - 1999, Edition 1/10, plus 2 Artist Proofs, 20x20cm, digital C-Print, Not mounted, based on a Polaroid, Signature label and Certificate, Art...

Pete Kasprzak’s passion for city life is expressed in his dynamic urban artworks. Kasprzak’s artworks express energy and life with animated brush strokes. He adds dynamic movement an...

'Strike a Pose' (Bombay Beach) 2019, 20x20cm, Edition 1/7 plus 2 Artist Proofs, digital C-Print based on a Polaroid, not mounted. Signed on the back and ...

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...

Untitled (Paradise) - 1999, 98x97cm. Edition 3/10. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 20451. Not mounted. ...

This mesmerizing underwater fine art photograph captures a dancer suspended in dark waters, draped in flowing copper-red fabric that creates striking contrast against pale skin. The ...

Swept Away - 2017, 50x50cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid. Signature label with certificate. Artist inventory PL2017-155. Not...

This is a contemporary black and white photograph of North American Wild Horses Photography by Shane Russeck Printed on archival photographic paper Edition of 10 Signed and numbere...

Silver and sepia tone photographic print of an indigenous spearfisher by Edward Sheriff Curtis, image circa 1901 (American, 1868-1952), as a 1974 copy of (and printed from negatives derived from) the original Edward Curtis copper gravure plate, by Jean-Antony du Lac (1929-2002). Curtis used a process he mastered of creating orotones, which are photographs on glass, which Jean-Anthony du Lac spent years mastering. Jean-Antony du Lac's work is considered that of a preservationist. Titled lower left, signed lower right. Presented in an aluminum frame with anti-glare glass. Paper size: 20"H x 15"W Born in France and raised in New York City, Jean-Anthony du Lac moved west to San Francisco in 1957. Jean was an accomplished photographer whose published credits include Life Magazine and the San Francisco Examiner. He spent many years reproducing Edward S. Curtis' images of North American Indians; and he mastered the process of creating orotones, which are photographic reproductions on glass. Jean's orotones appeared on the walls of the Smithsonian as well as the White House during the Carter and Reagan administrations. A preservationist, his reproduction of Edward Muybridge...

This early 1960s winter landscape photograph, captured by society photographer Slim Aarons, features people ice skating at the Palace Hotel, St. Moritz, Switzerland, 1963. This is a...

Animal nitrate - 2021 40x50cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2022-2007. ...

Strange Love - triptych, 3 pieces - 2005 Edition 1/5, 80x80cm each, 80x260cm installed, including gaps, 3 analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist, based on the 3 original Pol...

Rapture (29 Palms, CA) - 2022 48x46cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival Print, based on the Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 218829. Signature label and Certificate...

This is a pop art print of the original Yoda toy from Kenner "The Toys" by LA based Pop Artists DESTRO. They encapsulate an era instantly transporting the viewer to another time. P...

This silver gelatin print is signed in ink on the front of the mount beneath the image with title in pencil on the back of the mount. Likely printed in the early 1960s. From the co...

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...

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