USA - Photography

Artist: Man Ray (American born, 1890 - 1976) Title: SIDE PORTRAIT Date Of Negative: 1926 Type Of Print: Authentic Vintage Sheet Fed Photogravure/Heliogra...

John Casado - Untitled 20245, figurative black and white reclining female nude. 2001 - Unique lith silver gelatin photographic print. image = 18 7/8 x 22 1/4 or 48 x 56.5 centimeter...

JFK, JBK Relax and Smoke c_05_05. Image size is 13.75" x 20" (for 17" x 22" paper size). All Mark Shaw prints are made to order in limited editions on Hahnemuhle photo rag paper. Each print is Estate stamped on the back and signed and numbered by David Shaw, and accompanied by a letter of authenticity. Lead time is four to six weeks, but we often receive them sooner. *Please note this image is available in several sizes. Prices increase as editions sell out. A black and white photograph of Jackie Kennedy and John F. Kennedy. Jackie Kennedy is sitting on a sofa chair and is laying back. She has her legs crossed and her hands rest on the armrests. She looks and John F. Kennedy. JFK is sitting on the sofa with his arm resting on the sofa back. He has his legs crossed and is smoking. JFK has his back to the camera and is out of focus. This is also an interior shot. They are relaxing in a living room. There is a sofa and sofa chair. A coffee table with books...

S. Vincent Dillard Blind Beggar - Broadway & 34th St., New York City, 1992 Gelatin silver print 11 x 14 inches (27.9 x 35.6 cm)

President Jimmy Carter Archival pigment print 48 x 48 inches Signed and numbered edition of 10 William Coupon is an American photographer, born in New York City, known principally...

Original large format still life photograph from Linda Rosewall's series "Flora Italiana", an intensely beautiful body of works exploring the botanical ...

large scale abstract b&w photograph of mesmerizing monochromatic water surface SEASCAPE V by Frank Schott 60 x 48 inches / 152cm x 122cm signed edition of...

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...

Museum quality fine art print of Dita Von Teese by photographer Markus Klinko in 2013 in Los Angeles. This print is available in the following sizes, signed and numbered by Markus K...

Breathing In the Spirit of Shohaku Soga, 2003 by Eikoh Hosoe is a contemporary color photograph of Kazuo Ohno, a Butoh dancer. Hosoe's theatrical image is hand-signed on recto (front...

'Yucca Skies' Edition 1/10, 20x30cm, 2017, Archival Pigment Print on Velvet Watercolor Paper, 310gsm, Bright White, Acid Free, Signature label and Certificate. Published in Tao Rusp...

This is a unique work. Stamped on verso by The Estate of Andy Warhol and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Annotated with Foundation inventory number and initialed Tim ...

Signed limited edition fine art print of The Cure taken in the snow, London 1979. Signed and numbered by Jill Furmanovsky in pencil and featuring Jill’s official embossed studio sta...

"Rainbow Trailed" The J-Class boats Rainbow and Velsheda sail at near impossible angles as the sailors freely dangle their feet over the edge of the deck. This award-winning image is in the permanent collection of the Mariners' Museum, Newport News...

Archival Pigment print Medium Ed of 10 Palm & Trees: For this series, the artist explores short poems, the expansion of the palms, textures, and ease of the male figure surrounded b...

A Very Short Version of his Story, Black and White Nude Photography, Badertscher 1999 Signed, titled, dated twice, and inscribed in black ink, recto; Also signed, dated, and inscrib...

Wave I by Christian Stoll a mesmerizing photographic rendering of blue acquatic surface 58 x 58 inches (147 x 147cm) edition of 7 signed 48 x 48 inches (122 x 122cm) edition of 7 s...

Jackie sits at JFK’s senate desk in 1959 nb_048. Image size is 22" x 32" (for 24" x 36" paper size). All Mark Shaw prints are made to order in limited edit...

The gallery has the most extensive New York City landscape art photography, due to our abiding love for the city. We present the work of different photographers, some of whom are eme...

William Wegman is a renowned photographer famous for his unique and artistic photographs of Weimaraner puppies. His approach to is far from conventional, avoiding the typical "cuddly...

One of Steve McCurry's most iconic images, this portrait features a young Afghan girl with piercing green eyes wearing a red head scarf. Afghan Girl by Steve McCurry is a 24 x 20 i...

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

Texan politician and former Texas governor, Ann Richards with Dolly Parton taken at the Driskill Hotel, Austin Texas in 1982 by photographer Scott Newton Photographers notes: We wer...

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

Ephemeral Palace Antarctic Peninsula, Antarctica, 2012. 24 x 36 in / 61 x 91.4 cm / Edition of 20 31 x 46.5 in / 78.7 x 118.1 cm / Edition of 15 40 × 60 in / 101.6 x 152.4 cm / Edit...

Whisky Dance I (Sidewinder) - 2005 Edition 5/10, 8 pieces installed including gaps 172x,338cm, 82x80cm each. 8 analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist, on Fuji Crystal Archiv...

This is a contemporary black and white photograph of wild horses. "They represent the ultimate expression of American freedom" 36x48 Edition of 12 Printed on archival paper using a...

One Digital C-Print / Archival Pigment Print Edition of 1 per size Available sizes: 36 x 72 in 48 x 96 in “Collectible” series is a macro level exploration of coins, bills and stamp...

An underwater black and white nude photograph of young woman and her reflection in the water surface. Original digital archival pigment print signed by the artist. Limited edition o...

Reinhard Görner’s Leda with Swan unveils an intimate and evocative perspective on Correggio’s 16th-century masterpiece, capturing the painter’s exquisite handling of light, texture, ...

Combined Edition 25 Also available in 50 x 60 cm/ 20 x 24 inch and as combined Edition 10 in 76 x 101 cm / 30 x 40 inch 101 x 127 cm / 40 x 50 inch Portrait of British singer and s...

Kate Breakey's artistic process is an act of investigation – a passionate attempt to establish an understanding of the natural world – a version that incorporates both intellectual a...

Vintage Polaroid print (Unique) Signed in pencil, verso This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Price includes framing. Jim French first began drawing and then photographing male erotica in the 1960s. Originally a successful fashion illustrator, French and an old army buddy partnered to open a mail order company in New York City they called Luger. French contributed homoerotic drawings of hyper-masculine types such as soldiers, cowboys, and bikers. Eventually he bought out his business partner, and by 1967, under the pseudonym Rip Colt, he founded the now infamous Colt Studio...

Color capture of Muhammad Ali training in a boxing ring. Muhammad Ali was an American professional boxer and activist. Nicknamed "the Greatest", he is regarded as one of the most si...

An insipid notion (The astonished world) is a collection of unreal experiences caused by the feeling of late and inexperienced love, and the inability to fully know the experience of...

Archival pigment print Signed in black ink, recto 11 x 14 inches, sheet size 8.625 x 13 inches, image size This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. Born in Poland in 1942 as Armin Hagen Freiherr von Hoyningen-Huene, Peter Berlin...

11 x 14" vintage silver gelatin photograph, signed by Jack Mitchell. Mitchell dry mounted this photograph on archival board for exhibition. Comes directly from the Jack Mitchell Arc...

Showing a body that is hidden is the aesthetic apology for the insane judgment that the artist himself has taken as an excuse for not being 'pointed at' or rather as self-pointing. T...

This botanical still life arrangement of orange, pink, yellow and purple flowers is dramatic and mysterious against a dark black background. A white porcelain bird figurine stands to the right of the bouquet, a crystal geode and shell to the left. Edition 4/15. Printed on archival Simply Elegant Gold Fiber Paper 310gsm. 40 x 31 inches (unframed). The cost for the photograph mounted or framed is separate, please inquire with the gallery. Lisa A. Frank’s large-scale photographs are kaleidoscopic multilayered images of the natural world. The work’s complex patterns are composed from the artist’s deep archive of her own photographs; the images are digitally collaged and arranged in patterns that take cues from historic wallpaper...

Once We Were Warriors (Stage of Consciousness) - part of the 29 Palms, CA project - 2007 - featuring Radha Mitchell 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. digital C-Print, ...

Original photograph of Lake Louise in Banff National Park by the well known Canadian photographer William J.L. (Bill) Gibbons. Gibbons was born in 1914 and died in 1994. Mounted. Titled lower left margin. Signed with location lower right margin. Condition is excellent. Circa 1955. Unframed. Overall, newly professionally matted size 16 by 20 inches. Provenance: A Red Bank, New Jersey collector. Banff is a resort town in the province of Alberta, located within Banff National Park. The peaks of Mt. Rundle and Mt. Cascade, part of the Rocky Mountains, dominate its skyline. On Banff Avenue, the main thoroughfare, boutiques and restaurants mix with château-style hotels and souvenir shops. The surrounding 6,500 square kilometres of parkland are home to wildlife including elk and grizzly bears. Lake Louise is a hamlet within Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. Named after Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll...

"The Glimmer Twins - Mick Jagger" Photography 20x15 in by Charlie Auringer Year: 1978 Edition of 50 Medium: Silver gelatin limited edition photographic print on paper Signed and num...

Hunter & Gatti wanted to pay tribute to the neo-expressionist Jane-Michel Basquiat's legacy by merging the celebrity portraits they had made in the past for fashion editorials and ca...

ABOUT THIS PIECE: A Year Older is from Kimberly's "personal moments of happiness" series. LA based photographer Kimberly Genevieve is known for her use of color and interesting cropp...

Ivory Brigade Nunavut, Canada, 2006 24 × 36 in / 61 × 91.4 cm / Edition of 20 - $3,500 31 × 46.5 in / 78.7 × 118.1 cm / Edition of 15 40 × 60 in / 101.6 × 152.4 cm / Edition of 10 ...

Star me Kitten - 2017, 50x50cm. Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid, not mounted. Signature label with certificate. Artist inventory PL201...

An underwater photograph of a young naked woman in a pool. Original gallery quality archival pigment print signed by the author. Limited edition of 24 Paper size: 36"x29" Image ...

We present a new series of art photography featuring another city and its architectural beauty. We work with photographers internationally to curate city landscapes that tells a sto...

A beautiful and mysterious underwater photograph of a young naked woman slowly falling down through the pool water. Her strong body drops a bizarre shadow on the bottom of the pool ...

The artist's computer-generated paintings merge craftsmanship and technology, creating an eclectic and unique style. Through her art, she aims to illuminate the world. Tcherassi's w...

Annie’s Big Book Famed photographer Annie Leibovitz weighs in with her own SUMO Art Edition (No. 1–1,000) Archival pigment print Keith Haring (contact sheet), New York City, 1986...

Héliogravure on vélin paper. Inscription: unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Cecil Beaton, Electa Editrice Portfolios, 1981. Published and pri...

Original vintage 1948 photograph by DON WHITMAN - Western Photography Guild - of popular Physique Model PAT BURNHAM. This is an early original gelatin silv...

Actress Bette Davis posed in front of the Queen Mary, circa 1967. Bette Davis was an American actress of film, television, and theater. Regarded as one of the greatest actresses in ...

Breeze - 2024 - 20x20cm, Edition of 7 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the original Polaroid. Signature label with certificate. inventory PL2024-039. Not mount...

In Kings Road (2022) Mona Kuhn lyrically reconsiders the realms of time and space within the architectural elements of the Schindler House in Los Angeles. Built by Austrian architect Rudolph M. Schindler in 1922, the house was both a social and design experiment and an avant-garde hub for intellectuals and artists in the 1920s and ’30s. Fundamentals (2022) Kings Road: A Rudolph Schindler House 45" x 60" / 114cm x 152cm / edition of 3 30" x 40" / 76cm x 102cm /edition of 12 limited edition photograph printed under artist supervision + accompanied by signed artist certificate: artist signature label (8x10") signed/editioned/dated/titled by the artist + stamped for authenticity label is placed centered on verso of the mounted print __________________ 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. 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, Stanley/Barker Editions published Kuhn's Bushes & Succulents in 2018. In 2021, Thames & Hudson published a career retrospective titled Works. Kuhn's most recent publication Kings Road (2022) 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...

Through David Jay’s photography, context evaporates, and we as the viewer are left to engage the subjects, trade places, and for a moment, live behind their eyes. We recognize our sh...

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...