California - Landscape Photography

September 1968: Film star Tony Curtis (Bernard Schwartz) gazes at his third wife Leslie Allen while relaxing at the Quisisana Hotel, Capri. Slim Aarons Estate Edition, Certificate ...

The Lost Waterpark (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...

Are you my Angel (2011)
 from the series Monuments 50 x 65 cm, Edition of 1/10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Digital Photography printed on Canson Barita 310gr (not mou...

Till Death do us Part (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2007 Edition of 5, 160x125cm. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid. Sig...

This mid-1950s landscape photograph, captured by society photographer Slim Aarons, features skiers at the Cranmore Mountain Resort, North Conway, New Hampshire, USA This is an estat...

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...

Breathing II (Deconstructivism) - 2015 - about the narrative potential of images. 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid, Artist Inventory 15806. Signatur...

Snow Flakes (Californication) - 2021 20x24cm. Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory Numb...

PASSING UNDER by Erik Pawassar 48 x 71 inches (122 x 180cm) edition of 7 signed 27 x 40 inches (69 x 102cm) edition of 25 signed archival fine art pigment print signed & numbered...

Rosegarden (Suburbia) - 2004, 60x80cm, Edition of 1/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid, mounted on Aluminum with matte UV-Projection. Artist I...

large format monochromatic photograph from a series of photographic observances around White Sands, New Mexico,and the calming color palette of nature White Sands by Frank Schott 48 x 72 inches / 122cm x 183cm signed edition of 7 27 x 40 inches / 68cm x 102cm signed edition of 25 archival quality fine art pigment print limited art edition published by Edition EKTAlux artist signed + numbered certificate of authenticity ________________________ Frank Schott grew up in Germany and attended the prestigious Academy of Arts in Cologne, studying under Professor Arno Jansen, who was an early influence. Moving to California in 1998, Schott's work has evolved to include the epic landscapes and deserts of the American West as well as architectural, conceptual and more formal environments from both home and his travels. Influenced by a number of photographic piers and precursors such as Candida Höfer, Andreas Gursky. Thomas Struth. Jeff Wall, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Steven Shore...

The beach at Saint-Tropez, on the French Riviera, August 1971. 30 x 40 inches $3350 20 x 30 inches $3000 20 x 24 inches $2500 10 x 12 inches $1350 Complimentary dealer shipping ...

Selfie, Florence Italy. 2022 I love old photo booths. The real photo booths. Photo booths that take real photos that have to ...

Airstream Trailer (American Depression) - 2017 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate an...

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...

'Moab Memories', 2017, Edition 2/7 plus 2 Artist Proofs Based on an original Polaroid, Digital C-print, not mounted. Signed on the back and with certificate. Artist inventory PL2017-...

This early 1950s urban landscape photograph, captured by society photographer Slim Aarons, features Christmas trees and red and white automobile light trails on Park Avenue, New York...

Marfa ( Judd ) by Frank Schott Donald Judd's art studio, from a series of impressions captured in Marfa, Texas 48 x 72 inches / 122cm x 183m edition of 7 signed 27 x 40 inches / 68cm x 102cm edition of 25 signed archival quality fine art pigment print limited art edition published by Edition EKTAlux artist signed + numbered certificate of authenticity ________________________ Frank Schott grew up in Germany and attended the prestigious Academy of Arts in Cologne, studying under Professor Arno Jansen, who was an early influence. Moving to California in 1998, Schott's work has evolved to include the epic landscapes and deserts of the American West as well as architectural, conceptual and more formal environments from both home and his travels. Influenced by a number of photographic peers and precursors such as Candida Höfer, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Jeff Wall, Michael Wolf, Gregory Crewdson, William Eggleston and Joel Sternfeld, Schott's images successfully blend technical, conceptual and formal rigor with a decisive sense of composition and color. Schott's images have an iconic sensibility and give us a bird's eye view onto humanity and its constructs. The specific is edged towards the abstract, often revealing the compelling and disjunctive moment where nature meets man. Frank Schott was born in Cologne, Germany in 1962. He currently lives and works in San Francisco...

Lillian Crawford, the wife of actor Lee Kinsolving, in Palm Beach, May 1970. Slim Aarons Estate Edition, Certificate of Authenticity included Numbered and stamped by the Slim Aaron...

A Vision you can't capture (29 Palms, CA) - 2007 38 x 50 cm, Edition of 30. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 41...

Palm Springs Palm Trees X (Californication) - 2019 38x37cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. ...

Mexican Palm (Salton Sea) - 2022 50x50cm, Edition of 7, plus 2 Artist proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signed on back with Certificate. Not mounted. "The Salto...

The Urge to Disappear (Stranger than Paradise) - 1997 59x43cm, Edition 3/10. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. A...

Highly detailed mesmerizing birds' eye view of urban architectural landscape Flying High by Christian Stoll 48 x 67 inches (122 x 170cm) signed edition of 7 32 x 40 inches (81 x 10...

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Winter - 2001, 20x29cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid Slide. Signature label and Certifi...

Green - 2018, Edition 2/7 plus 2 Artist Proofs Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Signed on the back and certificate. Artist inventory PL2018-213. Not mounted. ...

GOLDEN GATE by Frank Schott an epic scale photograph of iconic Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco in Northern California's atmospheric morning sunrise light Framed "Modern Gallery...

'Untitled' (Oilfields) - 2004 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory # 1207. Not mounted. OILFIELDS...

dramatic wide angle view of California desert airport runway tarmac Runway by Frank Schott 48 x 87 inches (122 x 221cm) signed edition of 7 22 x 40 inches (56 x 102cm) signed e...

'Do Android Sheep Dream of Electric Plants' (Iceland) - 2013 - Edition of 10, 30x20cm, C-Print, Signature label and Certificate. Not mounted. Tao Ruspoli (born 7 November 1975) is an Italian-American filmmaker, photographer, and musician. Background He is the second son of occasional actor and aristocrat Prince Alessandro Ruspoli, 9th Prince of Cerveteri by Austrian-American actress Debra Berger. Tao was born in Bangkok, Thailand and raised in Rome and Los Angeles. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy. Career Moviemaker magazine singled out Ruspoli as one of the 10 Young Filmmakers To Watch in its spring 2008 issue. His feature narrative debut, Fix, was one of 10 feature films to screen in competition at the 2008 Slamdance Film Festival and soon afterward at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival where Ruspoli was awarded the Heineken Red Star Award for "most innovative and progressive filmmaker." Fix also won the Festival Award for Best Film at the 2008 Brooklyn Film Festival, Vail Film Festival and the 2008 Twin Rivers Media Festival, as well as other prizes at several international festivals. His most well-known documentary is Just Say Know, a personal discussion of his family's drug addiction. His other films include Flamenco: A Personal Journey, a feature length documentary about the flamenco way of life as it is lived by Gypsies in the south of Spain. He has directed a number of other short documentaries, including El Cable (also about Flamenco), and This Film Needs No Title: A Portrait of Raymond Smullyan (a portrait of the renowned logician, mathematician and concert pianist Raymond Smullyan). Tao founded LAFCO in 2000. The Los Angeles Filmmakers Cooperative, is a bohemian collective of filmmakers and musicians who work out of a converted school bus. Through LAFCO, Tao has produced several films and helped dozens of filmmakers to make their first films and discover the wonders of digital media. His producing credits include the feature film Camjackers, which he also acted in and co-edited. Camjackers won the best editing award at the 44th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Tao is an accomplished flamenco guitar...

Wallscape III by Frank Schott 48 x 64 inches (122 x 163cm) edition of 7 signed 30 x 40 inches (76 x 102cm) edition of 25 signed archival fine art pigment print printed under artis...

Indian Summer II (The Last Picture Show) - 2005, 128x125cm, Edition 1/5, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid, mounted ...

Inside the Trailer (Sidewinder), 2005, Edition 1/5, 4 pieces, each 48x47cm, installed with gaps 48x207cm installed including 5cm gaps. Analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist, ...

'Sunset' (Burning Man) Edition 2/10, 20x30cm, 2016, Color-Print, printed on Velvet Watercolor, 310gsm, Bright White, Acid Free, Signature label and Certificate. Not mounted. About Tao Ruspoli (born 7 November 1975) is an Italian-American filmmaker, photographer, and musician. Background He is the second son of occasional actor and aristocrat Prince Alessandro Ruspoli, 9th Prince of Cerveteri by Austrian-American actress Debra Berger. Tao was born in Bangkok, Thailand and raised in Rome and Los Angeles. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy. Career Moviemaker magazine singled out Ruspoli as one of the 10 Young Filmmakers To Watch in its spring 2008 issue. His feature narrative debut, Fix, was one of 10 feature films to screen in competition at the 2008 Slamdance Film Festival and soon afterward at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival where Ruspoli was awarded the Heineken Red Star Award for 'most innovative and progressive filmmaker.' Fix also won the Festival Award for Best Film at the 2008 Brooklyn Film Festival, Vail Film Festival and the 2008 Twin Rivers Media Festival, as well as other prizes at several international festivals. His most well-known documentary is Just Say Know, a personal discussion of his family's drug addiction. His other films include Flamenco: A Personal Journey, a feature length documentary about the flamenco way of life as it is lived by Gypsies in the south of Spain. He has directed a number of other short documentaries, including El Cable (also about Flamenco), and This Film Needs No Title: A Portrait of Raymond Smullyan (a portrait of the renowned logician, mathematician and concert pianist Raymond Smullyan). Tao founded LAFCO in 2000. The Los Angeles Filmmakers Cooperative, is a bohemian collective of filmmakers and musicians who work out of a converted school bus. Through LAFCO, Tao has produced several films and helped dozens of filmmakers to make their first films and discover the wonders of digital media. His producing credits include the feature film Camjackers, which he also acted in and co-edited. Camjackers won the best editing award at the 44th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Tao is an accomplished flamenco guitar player, and his first CD, FLAMENCO, was released on Mapleshade Records in 2005. He married actress Olivia Wilde in 2003. They divorced in 2011. He currently lives and works in the High Desert, California. He is the co-founder of the Bombay Beach Biennale. The Exaltation of Imagination Photographs and Musings in Defense of Burning Man by Tao Ruspoli The press around Burning Man had gotten so bad that I almost felt embarrassed to be going this year. Even Daniel Pinchbeck, famed psychonaut and burner par excellence, had written a thoughtful piece explaining why, after 15 consecutive years, he wasn’t going back this year: the festival had changed too much-the rich had taken over, it had gone from a relevant and fascinating social experiment to epitomizing the worst elements of capitalist excess. Besides, he seemed to be saying, the world is going through too many crises, both ecological and humanitarian, to justify the extravagance of an event like this. Keith Spencer...

The Farmer and his Wife (American Depression) - 2004 48 x 46 cm, Edition of 10 plus two artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. A...

Untitled (Paradise) - 1999, 50x50cm. Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 20461. No...

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Hotsprings - 2001, 20x29cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid Slide. Signature label and Cer...

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 ...

A view of the seaside pool at the Hotel St. Caterina, Amalfi, Italy, September 1984 Experience the timeless allure of the Amalfi Coast with Slim Aarons' captivating photograph, "Pool on the Amalfi Coast...

While you were sleeping 2019, 20x20 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 invento...

'Dusk' (Bombay Beach), Edition 1/10, 20x30cm, 2016, Color Print, printed on Velvet Watercolor, 310gsm, Bright White, Acid Free, Signature label and Certificate. About Tao Ruspoli ...

Deserted Bee Boxes (California Dreaming) - 2017 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Sign...

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Fellini and Trouble - 2001, 20x85cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid Slide. Signature labe...

A Stunning image of the famous Catholic Church in Carmel California. Phil is known for his incredible printing style. This particular image was taken w...

Serve (Ghost Town) - 2021 Sketches of a downtown disappearing. 40x40cm, Edition of 7, plus 2 Artist proofs. Digital silver gelatin print based on the Polaroid. Signed on back wi...

Untitled (Cowboys and Angels), 2005 50x39cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. artist Inventory No....

Blue Chair (Life on Mars) 20x30cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print. Signed on back with Certificate. Not mounted.

Holding on Tight (Chicks and Chicks and sometimes Cocks) - 2016 Edition of 10, 49x58cm, Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid Artist inventory 19522.02 Not mounted. Signature la...

Cars parked outside the Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in California, 1957. Slim Aarons 1957, printed later C-type print on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, Crisp detail, contin...

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 Sc...

Vanishing Point (The Princess and her Lover) part of the 29 Palms, CA project - 2010 Edition of 1/5, 125x123cm. Analog C-Print, hand printed by the artist and based on a Polaroid....

'Homage to Giorgio de Chirico' Edition 1/10, 20x30cm, 2012, printed on Velvet Watercolor, 310gsm, Bright White, Acid Free, Signature label and Certificate. Tao Ruspoli (born 7 Novem...

'Salton Sea Destruction II' (California Badlands) - 2016, 24x20cm, Edition 7/10, digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid Certificate and Signature label, artist Inventory No. 19393.1...

Loose print. Hand printed by artist. No damage. Mint condition. Signed and titled in pencil with notations No markings on verso.

Eternity (Deconstructivism) - 2020 - about the narrative potential of images. 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid, Artist Inven...

Light and Shadow (Ghost Town) - 2021 Sketches of a downtown disappearing. 20x20cm, Edition of 7, plus 2 Artist proofs. Digital silver gelatin print based on a Polaroid. Signed on back with Certificate. Not mounted. Erin Dougherty...

Mountain Ridge (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 44x59cm, Edition 1/10, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 535.01. Not mounted....

Stairs (Ghost Town) - 2020 Sketches of a downtown disappearing. 40x40cm, Edition of 7, plus 2 Artist proofs. Digital silver gelatin print based on a Polaroid. Signed on back with...

Untitled (Olancha) - 2006 38x37cm. Edition of 5, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 890. Not ...

My own private Travel Diary - Bishop, CA - Winter - 2001, 20x29cm, 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 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...