Stefanie Schneider Portrait Photography

What are we gonna do?! (Till Death do us Part) - 2008 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature la...

Outtake - (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 819. Signature label and cer...

I feel so alone! (Till Death do us Part) - 2008 40x48cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proof. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inve...

It rains on our love (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2008 40x48cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. artist...

Jules and Jim II (Renée’s Dream) - 2006 Including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 192 pages, hardcover, published by Snap Collective, 2024. 20x...

Gossip (Beachshoot) - 2005 20x20cm each, 20x45cm installed. Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist ...

Rendering Memories II (The Girl Behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 20x24cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Signature label and certificate. Artist Inventory #13388. Not mounted. Offered is a piece from the movie: The Girl Behind the White Picket Fence. Written and directed by Stefanie Schneider A tale told with blemished and expired Polaroid film about the hopes and dreams of a newly orphaned girl after losing her parents who lived in the Californian desert in an old travel trailer. -filmed with Polaroid film stock and Super-8 footage, overlaid with poetic voice-over monologue - this feature film creates a dynamic kaleidoscope of words and pictures, a dreamy tale that channels Terrence Malick, Gus Van Sant, and pages torn from a lonely girl's journal. (Palms Springs life magazine / Caroline Ryder) Stefanie Schneider By Caroline Ryder Travel up a bumpy dirt road in Morongo Valley, the trail strewn with rocks, and you’ll come upon a gigantic 1950s trailer in pristine condition, ringed by a white picket fence, with cottontail rabbits hopping among neat little rose bushes that bloom in spite of the broiling desert heat. Inside the trailer are period accents—a vintage radio, vintage fridge, little crocheted doilies, and dusty gilt-framed photographs. It’s a surreal home-sweet-home, an Americana fantasy as imagined by German artist and experimental filmmaker Stefanie Schneider whose work is so inspired by the desert landscape, she made it her home in 2005. “There’s a completely different light here than in Germany, a beautiful light,” says Schneider, whose property in Morongo is dotted with vintage trailers. They surround her midcentury home and serve as sets for her photoshoots or as guest lodgings for her friends from Hollywood and Berlin. “But what I really love about the desert is the desolation,” she continues. “The sense of hope for something that might or might not come. It’s easy to see our dreams projected in the desert.” Famed for shooting trailer park chic fine art photographs exclusively on vintage Polaroid film, Schneider recently completed her most ambitious project to date—a feature film made entirely of Polaroid stills (4000 images in total), the story set around her magnificent 1950s trailer. The film, called “The Girl Behind The White Picket Fence” tells the story of a broken-hearted girl who lives in the trailer. Her name is Heather, and she is played by model Heather Megan Christie, girlfriend of actor Joaquin Phoenix, and former partner of Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis, with whom she has a son. Heather stars opposite Kyle Larson (who plays ‘Hank’), a real-life gypsy fisherman who catches crab in Alaska when he’s not surfing in Southern California. Neither of the two had ever acted before, and never in the history of movie-making has a director shot a film entirely on Polaroid film. “There was great difficulty shooting a film this way,” says Schneider, who, with her long straight hair, wide innocent eyes, and thick-framed glasses, conjures an art-house Gretel. “If I had used a regular camera I would have had 36 exposures per minute, much faster and easier than using the old Polaroid camera which takes a long time to shoot one frame. Also, sometimes it doesn’t shoot at the exact moment you think it’s going to—but that’s really great because then you miss the perfect moment…and often those are the best shots.” Individually, the Polaroid photographs that comprise 29 PALMS, CA stand alone, but together and in sequence, filmed with super 8 and 16mm film stock and overlaid with poetic voice-over monologues, they create a dynamic kaleidoscope of words and pictures, a dreamy tale that channels Terrence Malick. Gus Van Sant, and pages torn from a lonely girl’s journal. The idea to shoot a movie in this way came about in 2004 when Schneider was working with leading German director Mark Forster (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace) on his film Stay. She had met Forster at director Wim Wender’s birthday party in Hollywood. A few years later, Forster asked Schneider to shoot Polaroids of scenes from Stay as he filmed; he used those photographs for dream and memory sequences in the movie. For the first time, Schneider saw her Polaroids strung together in sequence, moving with rhythm like a flipbook, in the context of a story. When Forster urged her to consider making a feature film using that technique, the seed of 29 PALMS, CA was sown. She mentioned the idea to her good friend German actor Udo Kier, who also gave the idea a big thumbs up, and agreed to play the part of a mysterious shaman in the film. Thanks to her strong reputation in the art world and her Hollywood connections, getting talented people on board was the easy part (for a while, Charlotte Gainsbourg was pegged to play the starring role, although she pulled out two weeks before shooting commenced because she was pregnant and not fit to travel to the desert.) The hard part was finding the perfect trailer—and bringing it to the desert. “This trailer almost killed us,” says Schneider’s partner Lance Waterman, who lives and works with Schneider in Morongo Valley. After finding it on eBay, the couple drove to Utah to pick it up, the plan being to tow it all the way back to the high desert themselves. Bad idea. “We were driving down a hill with this enormous trailer behind us when we realized that if we wanted to stop, there would be no way to do so without the trailer crushing us,” says Waterman. Adds Schneider: “Lance was even giving me instructions on how to jump out of the truck if we needed to.” Thankfully the road leveled and as soon as they were able to slow down and pull over, they called a professional towing company, which transported the trailer the remaining distance to Morongo Valley. Filming took place in Spring 2011 and 2012. Schneider recently submitted the film to major film festivals in Europe and the US, and it will be broadcast in 2013 by leading German television channel, Arte. While Schneider may come from a long tradition of photographers-turned-filmmakers—Stanley Kubrick started out as a photographer, as did Ken Russell (Tommy, Women in Love) and Larry Clark, who was a controversial fine art photographer before directing smash hit Kids—she does not see her future in Hollywood, directing blockbusters. Not necessarily. “I don’t think I want to make more films,” she says. “The actors were saying they would love to work with me again, and were asking if I would like to make other movies. But being on movie sets is far too stressful, and at least with this, I was in complete power of what was going on creatively. That said, if this gets a lot of acclaims…we can always think again. One should never say never.” Film features original soundtrack with songs by Adam Weiss, Daisy McCrackin, Billy Harvey, Sophie Huber, Zoe Bicat, Max Sharam, Cheyenne Randall...

'Radha Leopard Dress III' (29 Palms, CA) Edition 3/10, 20x20cm, 1999, digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist inventory 18258.03. Not mounted. Featuring Australian actress Radha Mitchell. Living and working in Los Angeles and Berlin, Stefanie Schneider's scintillating situations take place in the American West. Situated on the verge of an elusive super-reality, her photographic sequences provide the ambience for loosely woven story lines and a cast of phantasmic characters. Schneider works with the chemical mutations of expired Polaroid film stock. Chemical explosions of color spreading across the surfaces undermine the photograph's commitment to reality and induce her characters into trance-like dreamscapes. Like flickering sequences of old road movies Schneider's images seem to evaporate before conclusions can be made - their ephemeral reality manifesting in subtle gestures and mysterious motives. Schneider's images refuse to succumb to reality, they keep alive the confusions of dream, desire, fact, and fiction. Stefanie Schneider received her MFA in Communication Design at the Folkwang Schule Essen, Germany. Her work has been shown at the Museum for Photography, Braunschweig, Museum für Kommunikation, Berlin, the Institut für Neue Medien, Frankfurt, the Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden, Kunstverein Bielefeld, Museum für Moderne Kunst Passau, Les Rencontres d'Arles, Foto -Triennale Esslingen. “It was Stefanie Schneider, who inspired me to start the company THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT after seeing her work, which seems to achieve the possible from the impossible, creating the finest of art out of the most basic of mediums and materials. Indeed, after that one day, I was so impressed with her photography that I realized Polaroid film could not be allowed to disappear. Being at the precise moment in time where the world was about to lose Polaroid, I seized the moment and have put all my efforts and passion into saving Polaroid film. For that, I thank Stefanie Schneider almost exclusively, who played a bigger role than anyone in saving this American symbol of photography.” –Florian Kaps, March 8th 2010 (“Doc” Dr. Florian Kaps, founder of “The Impossible Project”) Selected Exhibitions 2019 Participating and curating the newly founded Polaroid Museum at the Bombay Beach Biennale 2019 (G) invited project at Saatchi's The Other Art Fair, LA - Polaroid Curation Instant Dreams USA film release March/April NYC, L.A. 2018 participating and curating Bombay Beach Biennale 2018 (G) Rough Play Project, Available for all, Joshua, Tree, USA (G) 2017 BLICKFELD] Analoge Fotografie, Kommunale Galerie Steglitz-Zehlendorf (G) (catalog) Kunstverein Bad Homburg Artlantis, Bad Homburg (G)

 2016 
Instantdreams, Instantdreams Gallery, Berlin 

(S) 2015
 Desert Voices, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) with Pamela Littky 
Blue Nudes, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) 

 2014

 Summer Show, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (G) 6 Finalists, Saatchi Gallery London (G) 
Instantdreams, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (S)
Grand Opening, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) with Banksy, Andy Warhol, Alison Bignon, Sophie Dickens, Victor Gingembre and others
 2013 
Heather's Dream, Short, nominated for the German Short Film Award 2013 (Deutscher Kurzfilmpreis)
Images For Images (Artists fir Tichy), GASK - Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region,  Kutná Hora, Czech Republic, (G) with Richard Prince, Nan Golding, Shirana Shahbazi, Sophie Calle, Martin Kippenberger, Arnulf Rainer, Thomas Ruff, Katharina Grosse, Jonathan Meese & others (catalog) 
The Girl behind the White Picket Fence, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (S)
 Heather's Dream, Short, German Competition Short Film Festival Oberhausen 
Multimedia Presentation with Artist Stefanie Schneider, Palms Springs Art Museum, Annenberg Theater
 The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, (G) with Ansel Adams, Bruce Charlesworth, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Charles and Ray Eames, Robert Mapplethorpe, Lisa Oppenheim, Andy Warhol and others, (catalog)
 Road Atlas - Straßenfotografie, DZ Bank Collection: Kunsthalle Erfurt (Spring), Art Foyer DZ Bank, Frankfurt/Main, (G) with Helen Levitt, Pieter Hugo, Nobuyoshi Araki, Pietro Donzelli, and others (catalog)  
2012
 Stranger Than Paradise, Christian Hohmenn Fine Art, Palms Desert, (S)
 Stefanie Schneider, Gallery at Cliff Lede Vineyards, Napa Valley, CA, (S)
 Bienale Art Auction 2012, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, (G), with Ai Weiwei, John Baldessari, Christo, Ed Ruscha, Christopher Russell... MUSES, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (G) 
Polaroid (IM)POSSIBLE - THE WESTLICHT COLLECTION, NRW Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft, Düsseldorf (G), (catalog)
 Road Atlas - Straßenfotografie, DZ Bank Collection: Kunstmuseum Dieselkraftwerk, Cottbus, (G), (catalog), 
Studio Scholorship, Centro Cultural Andratx, Mallorca, May 2012
 Selling Sex, ShowStudio Gallery, London (G) with Cortney Andrews, Una Burke, Liz Cohen, Inge Jacobsen, and others
 Stranger Than Paradise, Scott White Contemporary, San Diego, (S) 

2011 
Kunst zu verlosen !  // Art to raffle off !, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, (G) with Monica Bonvicini, Tim Eitel...

It’s Written in the Moonlight (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 Including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 192 pages, hardcover, published by Snap Co...

Memory Gaps (The Girl Behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 20x24cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Signature label and certificate. Artist Inventory #13359. Not mounted. Offered is a piece from the movie: The Girl Behind the White Picket Fence. Written and directed by Stefanie Schneider A tale told with blemished and expired Polaroid film about the hopes and dreams of a newly orphaned girl after losing her parents who lived in the Californian desert in an old travel trailer. -filmed with Polaroid film stock and Super-8 footage, overlaid with poetic voice-over monologue - this feature film creates a dynamic kaleidoscope of words and pictures, a dreamy tale that channels Terrence Malick, Gus Van Sant, and pages torn from a lonely girl's journal. (Palms Springs life magazine / Caroline Ryder) Stefanie Schneider By Caroline Ryder Travel up a bumpy dirt road in Morongo Valley, the trail strewn with rocks, and you’ll come upon a gigantic 1950s trailer in pristine condition, ringed by a white picket fence, with cottontail rabbits hopping among neat little rose bushes that bloom in spite of the broiling desert heat. Inside the trailer are period accents—a vintage radio, vintage fridge, little crocheted doilies, and dusty gilt-framed photographs. It’s a surreal home-sweet-home, an Americana fantasy as imagined by German artist and experimental filmmaker Stefanie Schneider whose work is so inspired by the desert landscape, she made it her home in 2005. “There’s a completely different light here than in Germany, a beautiful light,” says Schneider, whose property in Morongo is dotted with vintage trailers. They surround her midcentury home and serve as sets for her photoshoots or as guest lodgings for her friends from Hollywood and Berlin. “But what I really love about the desert is the desolation,” she continues. “The sense of hope for something that might or might not come. It’s easy to see our dreams projected in the desert.” Famed for shooting trailer park chic fine art photographs exclusively on vintage Polaroid film, Schneider recently completed her most ambitious project to date—a feature film made entirely of Polaroid stills (4000 images in total), the story set around her magnificent 1950s trailer. The film, called “The Girl Behind The White Picket Fence” tells the story of a broken-hearted girl who lives in the trailer. Her name is Heather, and she is played by model Heather Megan Christie, girlfriend of actor Joaquin Phoenix, and former partner of Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis, with whom she has a son. Heather stars opposite Kyle Larson (who plays ‘Hank’), a real-life gypsy fisherman who catches crab in Alaska when he’s not surfing in Southern California. Neither of the two had ever acted before, and never in the history of movie-making has a director shot a film entirely on Polaroid film. “There was great difficulty shooting a film this way,” says Schneider, who, with her long straight hair, wide innocent eyes, and thick-framed glasses, conjures an art-house Gretel. “If I had used a regular camera I would have had 36 exposures per minute, much faster and easier than using the old Polaroid camera which takes a long time to shoot one frame. Also, sometimes it doesn’t shoot at the exact moment you think it’s going to—but that’s really great because then you miss the perfect moment…and often those are the best shots.” Individually, the Polaroid photographs that comprise 29 PALMS, CA stand alone, but together and in sequence, filmed with super 8 and 16mm film stock and overlaid with poetic voice-over monologues, they create a dynamic kaleidoscope of words and pictures, a dreamy tale that channels Terrence Malick. Gus Van Sant, and pages torn from a lonely girl’s journal. The idea to shoot a movie in this way came about in 2004 when Schneider was working with leading German director Mark Forster (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace) on his film Stay. She had met Forster at director Wim Wender’s birthday party in Hollywood. A few years later, Forster asked Schneider to shoot Polaroids of scenes from Stay as he filmed; he used those photographs for dream and memory sequences in the movie. For the first time, Schneider saw her Polaroids strung together in sequence, moving with rhythm like a flipbook, in the context of a story. When Forster urged her to consider making a feature film using that technique, the seed of 29 PALMS, CA was sown. She mentioned the idea to her good friend German actor Udo Kier, who also gave the idea a big thumbs up, and agreed to play the part of a mysterious shaman in the film. Thanks to her strong reputation in the art world and her Hollywood connections, getting talented people on board was the easy part (for a while, Charlotte Gainsbourg was pegged to play the starring role, although she pulled out two weeks before shooting commenced because she was pregnant and not fit to travel to the desert.) The hard part was finding the perfect trailer—and bringing it to the desert. “This trailer almost killed us,” says Schneider’s partner Lance Waterman, who lives and works with Schneider in Morongo Valley. After finding it on eBay, the couple drove to Utah to pick it up, the plan being to tow it all the way back to the high desert themselves. Bad idea. “We were driving down a hill with this enormous trailer behind us when we realized that if we wanted to stop, there would be no way to do so without the trailer crushing us,” says Waterman. Adds Schneider: “Lance was even giving me instructions on how to jump out of the truck if we needed to.” Thankfully the road leveled and as soon as they were able to slow down and pull over, they called a professional towing company, which transported the trailer the remaining distance to Morongo Valley. Filming took place in Spring 2011 and 2012. Schneider recently submitted the film to major film festivals in Europe and the US, and it will be broadcast in 2013 by leading German television channel, Arte. While Schneider may come from a long tradition of photographers-turned-filmmakers—Stanley Kubrick started out as a photographer, as did Ken Russell (Tommy, Women in Love) and Larry Clark, who was a controversial fine art photographer before directing smash hit Kids—she does not see her future in Hollywood, directing blockbusters. Not necessarily. “I don’t think I want to make more films,” she says. “The actors were saying they would love to work with me again, and were asking if I would like to make other movies. But being on movie sets is far too stressful, and at least with this, I was in complete power of what was going on creatively. That said, if this gets a lot of acclaims…we can always think again. One should never say never.” Film features original soundtrack with songs by Adam Weiss, Daisy McCrackin, Billy Harvey, Sophie Huber, Zoe Bicat, Max Sharam, Cheyenne Randall...

Side Effects (The Girl Behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 20x24cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Signature label and certificate. Artist Inventory #13303. Not mounted. Offered is a piece from the movie: The Girl Behind the White Picket Fence. Written and directed by Stefanie Schneider A tale told with blemished and expired Polaroid film about the hopes and dreams of a newly orphaned girl after losing her parents who lived in the Californian desert in an old travel trailer. -filmed with Polaroid film stock and Super-8 footage, overlaid with poetic voice-over monologue - this feature film creates a dynamic kaleidoscope of words and pictures, a dreamy tale that channels Terrence Malick, Gus Van Sant, and pages torn from a lonely girl's journal. (Palms Springs life magazine / Caroline Ryder) Stefanie Schneider By Caroline Ryder Inside the trailer are period accents—a vintage radio, vintage fridge, little crocheted doilies, and dusty gilt-framed photographs. It’s a surreal home-sweet-home, an Americana fantasy as imagined by German artist and experimental filmmaker Stefanie Schneider whose work is so inspired by the desert landscape, she made it her home in 2005. “There’s a completely different light here than in Germany, a beautiful light,” says Schneider, whose property in Morongo is dotted with vintage trailers. They surround her midcentury home and serve as sets for her photoshoots or as guest lodgings for her friends from Hollywood and Berlin. “But what I really love about the desert is the desolation,” she continues. “The sense of hope for something that might or might not come. It’s easy to see our dreams projected in the desert.” Famed for shooting trailer park chic fine art photographs exclusively on vintage Polaroid film, Schneider recently completed her most ambitious project to date—a feature film made entirely of Polaroid stills (4000 images in total), the story set around her magnificent 1950s trailer. The film, called “The Girl Behind The White Picket Fence” tells the story of a broken-hearted girl who lives in the trailer. Her name is Heather, and she is played by model Heather Megan Christie, girlfriend of actor Joaquin Phoenix, and former partner of Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis, with whom she has a son. Heather stars opposite Kyle Larson (who plays ‘Hank’), a real-life gypsy fisherman who catches crab in Alaska when he’s not surfing in Southern California. Neither of the two had ever acted before, and never in the history of movie-making has a director shot a film entirely on Polaroid film. “There was great difficulty shooting a film this way,” says Schneider, who, with her long straight hair, wide innocent eyes, and thick-framed glasses, conjures an art-house Gretel. “If I had used a regular camera I would have had 36 exposures per minute, much faster and easier than using the old Polaroid camera which takes a long time to shoot one frame. Also, sometimes it doesn’t shoot at the exact moment you think it’s going to—but that’s really great because then you miss the perfect moment…and often those are the best shots.” Individually, the Polaroid photographs that comprise 29 PALMS, CA stand alone, but together and in sequence, filmed with super 8 and 16mm film stock and overlaid with poetic voice-over monologues, they create a dynamic kaleidoscope of words and pictures, a dreamy tale that channels Terrence Malick. Gus Van Sant, and pages torn from a lonely girl’s journal. The idea to shoot a movie in this way came about in 2004 when Schneider was working with leading German director Mark Forster (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace) on his film Stay. She had met Forster at director Wim Wender’s birthday party in Hollywood. A few years later, Forster asked Schneider to shoot Polaroids of scenes from Stay as he filmed; he used those photographs for dream and memory sequences in the movie. For the first time, Schneider saw her Polaroids strung together in sequence, moving with rhythm like a flipbook, in the context of a story. When Forster urged her to consider making a feature film using that technique, the seed of 29 PALMS, CA was sown. She mentioned the idea to her good friend German actor Udo Kier, who also gave the idea a big thumbs up, and agreed to play the part of a mysterious shaman in the film. Thanks to her strong reputation in the art world and her Hollywood connections, getting talented people on board was the easy part (for a while, Charlotte Gainsbourg was pegged to play the starring role, although she pulled out two weeks before shooting commenced because she was pregnant and not fit to travel to the desert.) The hard part was finding the perfect trailer—and bringing it to the desert. “This trailer almost killed us,” says Schneider’s partner Lance Waterman, who lives and works with Schneider in Morongo Valley. After finding it on eBay, the couple drove to Utah to pick it up, the plan being to tow it all the way back to the high desert themselves. Bad idea. “We were driving down a hill with this enormous trailer behind us when we realized that if we wanted to stop, there would be no way to do so without the trailer crushing us,” says Waterman. Adds Schneider: “Lance was even giving me instructions on how to jump out of the truck if we needed to.” Thankfully the road leveled and as soon as they were able to slow down and pull over, they called a professional towing company, which transported the trailer the remaining distance to Morongo Valley. Filming took place in Spring 2011 and 2012. Schneider recently submitted the film to major film festivals in Europe and the US, and it will be broadcast in 2013 by leading German television channel, Arte. While Schneider may come from a long tradition of photographers-turned-filmmakers—Stanley Kubrick started out as a photographer, as did Ken Russell (Tommy, Women in Love) and Larry Clark, who was a controversial fine art photographer before directing smash hit Kids—she does not see her future in Hollywood, directing blockbusters. Not necessarily. “I don’t think I want to make more films,” she says. “The actors were saying they would love to work with me again, and were asking if I would like to make other movies. But being on movie sets is far too stressful, and at least with this, I was in complete power of what was going on creatively. That said, if this gets a lot of acclaims…we can always think again. One should never say never.” Film features original soundtrack with songs by Adam Weiss, Daisy McCrackin, Billy Harvey, Sophie Huber, Zoe Bicat, Max Sharam, Cheyenne Randall...

Snow Silence (Stranger than Paradise) - 2005 20x20cm, (each) Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artis...

Slow Days (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate....

The Letter (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 Including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 192 pages, hardcover, published by Snap Collective, 2024. 2...

Little Darlings (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 Including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 192 pages, hardcover, published by Snap Collective, 2024...

The Dance (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 40x48cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist Inventory...

Waiting (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 20x24cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate, Artist inventory number: 99...

Sunset (Oxana’s 30th Birthday) - 2007 featuring Radha Mitchell including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 196 pages, hardcover, published by Snap ...

A Vision you can't Capture (29 Palms, CA) - 2008 including Stefanie Schneider's new monograph "A Half Forgotten Dream" signed. 196 pages, hardcover, published by Snap Collective, 20...

Promise Me (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005, 38x37cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventor...

Joshua Tree National Park (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 50x49cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label....

'Penelope' from the movie Immaculate Springs - 1998 Edition of 10, 20x30cm, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artis...

Untitled (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 part of the 29 Palms, CA project. 40x48cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on t...

Play among the Stars (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature labe...

For Your Eyes Only (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005, 38x37cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist ...

New in Town (Oxana's 30th Birthday) - 2007, from the 29 Palms, CA project - 20x24cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Signa...

Red Roses (Oxana's 30th Birthday) - 2007 from the 29 Palms, CA project 24x29cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature label with ...

The Bird Man (Haley and the Birds) - 2013 50x49cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventor...

Precious (Chicks and Chicks and Sometimes Cocks) - 2019 20x20cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Ar...

Stefanie on Sofa beaten (29 Palms, CA) - 1998 58x56cm, Edition of 10, analog C-Print, printed by the Artist, based on the Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate, artist invent...

Untitled - Stage of Consciousness (29 Palms, CA) - 2007 Edition 2/5 , 75x93cm, 2007 analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on a Polaroid, Ar...

Frozen XII (Stranger than Paradise) - 2001 50x49cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Invent...

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

Time Out (Haley and the Birds) - 2013 40x39cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #1...

Battlefield (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 44x59cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Invent...

Deserted (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 40x48cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist Inventory ...

You're not taking care of me! (Till Death do us Part) - 2008 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signa...

There is no Solution (Till Death do us Part) - 2008 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature labe...

Hidden (The last Picture Show) - 1999 50x49cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist In...

Feathered (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 20x24cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print print, based on the original Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate Ar...

Snap–15 Minutes of Fame (Wastelands) - 4 pieces, 2003 Edition of 5, 105x100cm each, 220x220cm installed. Analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper,...

Last Season I - so I walked away from my Valley (Wastelands), diptych - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist...

Blown Away (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist Inventor...

Flying (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 part of the 29 Palms, CA project. 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #7870. Not mounted. LIFE’S A DREAM (The Personal World of Stefanie Schneider) 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...

Don't give up on us, Baby (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature...

Backcasting (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist Invento...

Randy and I (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist inventory Number 1170. Signature label and Cer...

Last Season II - so I walked away from my Valley (Wastelands) - 2003 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist invento...

Seagulls (Zuma Beach) - 1999 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artists Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artist Inventory # 198. Not mou...

Ether, (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist Inventory # ...

Star Ship (Zuma Beach) - 1999 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artists Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artist Inventory # 926. Not mo...

Highway One (Zuma Beach) - 1999 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artists Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Signature Label and Certificate. Artist Inventory # 201. Not ...

Love (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 part of the 29 Palms, CA project. Featuring Udo Kier and Radha Mitchell 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based...

Wild Boy (Stranger than Paradise) - 1997 20x25cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist Inventory ...

Palm Trees Dive by (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 44x59cm, Edition 2/10. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. A...

Play among the Stars (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 80x30cm including white frame, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certific...

'There is no Forever' (Till Death do us Part) - 2005 40x48cm, Edition of 10. Archival C-Print print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. ...

The Letter (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 50x49cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist...

The Letter (Till Death Do Us Part) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 8846. Not mounted. MARGARITA (OFF) "I must go. I can feel his breath on the trail el Diablo...

Gravity (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - 2013 80x80cm, Edition 2/5. Analog C-Print printed on Fuji Archive Paper, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Mou...