Artist Stefanie Schneider And The End Of Polaroid Film

First Person Artist is a weekly column by artist Kimberly Brooks in which she provides commentary on the creative process and showcases artists' work from around the world. This week's featured artist is German-born photographer Stefanie Schneider.

Last week, Polaroid announced that it would be discontinuing the beloved Polaroid film. Even if it was expected, I became instantly saddened by the news. With today's digital "take 50 keep 2" picture-taking mentality, I know fewer and fewer people who even keep photo albums because the sheer editing task is so daunting.

Stefanie Schneider. Untitled 40.2 x 39.4 inch Limited Edition

I will never forget when my parents brought home their Poloroid SX-70 Camera. After "say cheese" we would grab the photo from its mouth and flap it around like angry chickens with the misguided belief that this would help it develop. Then, we watched the image appear like a magic trick before our very eyes. Little did we know then that the real magic would occur decades later, when the colors would fade in a yellow green haze and offer an aesthetic aftertaste even richer than the instant gratification of seeing it develop.

During my last show, "Mom's Friends," about my mother and her friends in the 70s, I foraged through old family albums and found page after delicious page of distorted photos that to me signified nothing less than the new born freedom of a generation redefining itself.

Stefanie Schneider. The Princess, 128 x 125cm, c-print, edition of 5

It was around this time when I was researching my show that I discovered and fell in love with the work of the German-born artist Stefanie Schneider. Schneider uses expired Polaroid film and lets the medium's natural distortions and milky opalescence infuse every frame. She creates narratives with a cast of characters who sizzle in what appears to be imported thirty-year-old California sunlight. Like old film stills, the ensuing dreamscapes provide an ideal stage to watch a story unfold. I caught up with her in her studio in Berlin where we discussed light, love, her new film and the reality of obsolescence.

Kimberly Brooks: How are you mourning the news that Polaroid is discontinuing your medium?

Stefanie Schneider: It's an era ending again. No more family pictures developing in front of the children's eyes. A piece of beauty disappearing....a piece of culture. Polaroid material has the most beautiful quality -- the colors on one side, but then the magic moment in witnessing the image to appear. The time stands still and the act of watching the image develop can be shared with the people around you. In the fast world of today it's nice to slow down for a moment. At the same time Polaroid slows time, it also captures a moment which becomes the past so instantly that the decay of time is even more apparent-- it gives the image a certain sentimentality or melancholy. Because of that intensity of the moment it seems to change the interaction of the next moment. The Polaroid moment is one of a kind, an original every time.

Stefanie Schneider, The Days I Saw Him Last, 125 x 150 cm, c-print, edition of 5, 2007.

KB: You're from Germany, yet you in many ways capture such a California essence. Did you spend time in California before you conceived of your first show shot there? What was your first California experience?

SS: California always had been a dream to me. I guess growing up in the 70s with movies like Vanishing Point, The Getaway, and Badlands formed the need for me to leave Germany for California. I'd never even visited before I moved there. When I moved to Los Angeles in 1996 right away I felt at home. Everything was in place and the dream was alive. California looked it and the Polaroids made it even more real.

Stefanie Schneider, Untitled, triptych 60 x 70 cm each, c-print, edition of 5, 2007.

KB: In Hollywood, it's a truism that all the best cinematographers are foreigners because they can see a place the way a native can't. You capture the essence of California better than most Californians do. At what point did your work with Polaroid start your journey as an artist?

SS: It was all a coincidental life source. When I started taking polaroids I didn't even have a gallery. But I met gallerist Susanne Vielmetter about half a year after I started working with Polaroids and when I shuffled them out of a box onto the table. She loved them right away and we planned a show together.

Stefanie Schneider, 29 palms lot, 60 x 60 cm, edition of 10, c-print 1999.

KB: I recognize California beaches and Joshua Tree, in your work. Is it all in California or did you venture out?

Almost all my photographs are taken in California, a few in Nevada like the Vegas series and the photographs for the movie Stay have been all taken in New York, of course. Most of my work is being shot in 29 Palms in the California Desert.

KB: I saw the photos from Stay (featuring Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor). Even though I recognize them as actors, the sequence still allowed me to get lost in the narrative --What were they doing on the top of the building? Why does he grab her arm?", etc. Have you ever worked on a movie?

SS: I am working right now on a feature film on Polaroid. In it I explore and document the dreams and fantasies of a group of people living in a trailer park community in the California desert. It will be finished in about five years and is developed online at www.twentyninepalms.ca". Every year we are having an exhibit to show the bits and pieces already shot. I hope I will be able to finish the film. Due to the closure of Polaroid this project might be in jeopardy. Because I'm working on outdated material I have a little bit more time. This is the first and only film ever made on Polaroid. Right now in Berlin I'm showing the very first exhibition of the project. It's still on till March 15th.

KB: What is the ultimate subject for this medium?

SS: Love. There is no past, no future, no present. All seems to be happening at the same time. It breathes a senseless pain that has no place in the present. The ex-lover experiences the residues of love as an amputee experiences the sensation of a ghost limb. It is the tangible experience of "absence" that has inspired this piece below.

The Princess' Brother, 128 x 125cm, c-print, edition of 5, 2007

KB: In terms of artistic inspiration, who are some authors or artists you look to?

SS: I am more inspired by film, music and books. Like Days of Heaven, Badlands, 2046, The Last Picture Show, The Flaunder by Guenther Grass, the songs by Hildegard Knef and Serge Gainsbourg or Coco Rosie. I am also inspired by the 29 palms, California Group. We inspire each other.

"Badlands" Movie Still from featuring Sissy Spacek

Stefanie Schneider received her MFA in Communication Design at the Folkwang Schule Essen, Germany. Her work has been shown at the Staedtische Ausstellungshalle am Hawerkamp, Muenster, the Kunstallianz, Berlin, the Institut für Neue Medien, Frankfurt, and the Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden, Kunstverein Bielefeld, Kunstverein Recklinghausen, Museum für Moderne Kunst Passau. Upcoming shows include

Berlin: "29 Palms, CA" <> ), Galerie Spesshardt-Klein, Berlin - 10th of February to 2nd of March 2008 - also shown at the Berlinale / Forum expanded
Les Rencontres d'Arles - Photo Festival South of France, 7th to 13th July 2008, curated by Christian Lacroix
Frenzy, Salzburger Festspiele, Sujet of the year presentation
Sidewinder, Galerie Robert Drees, Hannover, Germany
Sidewinder, c.art-Galerie, Bregenz, Austria

Stefanie Schneider is represented by Scalo Guye in Los Angeles, California and Galerie Robert Drees in Hannover, Germany.
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Come back every Saturday for more Kimberly Brooks. You can view all the columns and essays at www.firstpersonartist.com

Comments

[MichaelLance68]

Tis a sad sad day for the whole world, especially the generations that will never know the beauty of seeing a polaroid develop in their hands. The analog process will come back in my opinion because of the sheer beauty of it. At least I hope. Somehow its magic and I really can't understand why polaroid would cash out.
SX-70 film was and for some time still is the most magic photographic experience I've ever seen.

[workingboy]

i have albums of family snapshots, taken during the 20's, 30's, 40's. photos are crisp black and white with white borders and deckled edges -- wonderful. the later photos, in color, don't hold up as well. for one thing, colors have fashion: yesteryear's blue is not today's. people once put their photos on slides; whatever happened to those things? if people find editing a photo collection so "daunting" ..... i don't think anything can help them. they're just too precious and should concentrate on their lattes.

[GregoryTenenbaum]

Its not the end of Polaroid.

They have stopped making cameras. They will stop making instant film sometime next year.

Fujifilm make instant film, certainly not the whole range that Polaroid have (Type 55 will be missed) but a lot of it, and its very popular with pros. They could extend their range to cover any gaps but as it is,

We would all like to use US Made products, but the Japanese make stuff just as good.

Fujifilm, unlike Polaroid, make lenses, film stock for photography and Hollywood, and they also manufacture the new H series Hasselblad MF digital camera bodies. And their lenses rock too. Better than Zeiss. Better than the Germans and Swedes ever did. Get over it.

So I think they can make instant film too.

Why is this a story? Instant film will be with us for a long time to come.

[BillLumbergh]

So you're another elitist photosnob.
A camera that costs as much as a car is great? No kidding, really?
In lenses, sharper does not automatically equal better. Unless you're looking for something to brag about, like most photosnobs.

[GregoryTenenbaum]

Bill

Read my post.

I use 20 dollar Lomos and Holgas and expensive Hasselblads. So what. Thats not the point I made. Let me tell you now, you can take better pictures with a 50 year old Crown Graphic than you can with a modern Hasselblad H2 or H3.

The point I made (for your benefit again) is:

INSTANT FILM IS NOT DEAD

FUJIFILM MAKE IT AND PROS USE IT

The same company that makes millions of feet of cinema and photographic film, as well as top end cameras and a large numbers of lenses used in broadcast TV and video.

They arent going out of business anytime soon.

Fujfilm is a CHEMICAL COMPANY.

And it will make instant film for many decades to come. The end of Polaroid is about as relevant a story as the end of Lada as a car manufacturer, should that occur.

[stinpol]

Artists have used Polaroid photography productively by exploiting its very limitations, but for snapshooters it was always a mediocre medium: 1) Unless you could afford, say, a Hasselblad with a Polaroid back, you could never frame your image properly, and the parallax errors were fierce. 2) The color may look nostalgic as all get-out, but its pronounced red bias turned scenics to mud. 3) It was prohibitively expensive, especially after all the retakes due to the &^%$!!! framing problems. 4) If you didn't spread the preservative goo exactly evenly, badly coated parts of your print would quickly fade. So let's salute its passing but not get all choked up here.

More interesting perhaps is the fact that Polaroid was a proprietary, high-tech medium, so killing it instantly and totally killed artists' ability to utilize it. Despite their obsolescence, we can (and do) still use pin hole cameras and make chemical images and tintypes and shadowgrams -- but not Polaroids, not ever. When before in the history of art has an expressive medium simply vanished?

[InternationalObserver]

I remember when Polaroid successfully sued Kodak who had produced a 'similar' type of instant film. Kodak had to stop producing their instant film, since Polaroid owned the concept copyright. I wonder how different things might be if Polaroid had lisenced the product to Kodak.

It's possible *everyone* would have started using it (Kodak had market dominance for decades) Polaroid would have got a royalty %, and it's possible the instant film would have somehow been incorporated into Digital Cameras. But no, the majority of people continued to use Kodak cameras, got into the habit of developing rolls of film, and now they do the same with Digital pictures (ie take them in to be developed).

[My apologies for discussing 'business' in an 'art' thread!]

[factotem]

Kodak made better Instant photo products. You could peel and throw the chemical pack away after the pic devleoped, so your photo would actually STOP developing. What a concept. The colors were more stable. You could trim the print (Kodak trim-prints) because the chemicals were no longer inside it. The white border was an integral part of the picture, not some applied paper nuisance.

Rather than compete Polaroid just sued, put them out of business and continued buffing their nails and taking long lunches. So Polaroid products NEVER got any better. Only a product with no competitors could have stayed in business as long as they did. Good riddance to Polaroid. Their product was shit by the 70s.

[moderationsmuse]

I love these images. Was also charmed to discover that Kimberly Brooks has used old photos in her own work. I guess probably a lot of artists have done so. Some of my paintings using old photographic images can be seen here: http://oldphotosintopainting.blogspot.com/

I looked at Kimberly's paintings on the website link above and find the Mom's friends series really delightful. My favorite is this one:
http://moderationsmuse-about-art.blogspot.com/2008/03/kimberly-brookss-painting-portrait-of.html
Don't know, strictly speaking, if it's one of the 70s vintage images? But it has a very striking design and strong psychological element.

When I first realized I wanted to be an artist, it was Degas's drawings that particularly attracted me. I have been looking back at Degas's work lately, rediscovering my love for the dynamism of his images -- noticing things in them I'd not noticed before even after very long acquaintance! It has spurred me to draw a lot. I also find myself wanting to deal with the figure, portraying people in ordinary settings as Degas did and searching out the formal beauties of that.
About Stefanie Schneider, I don't usually enjoy photography as an "art form." Somehow turning photography into "art" has, to my mind, diminished "art" without adding much of value to "photography." Nonetheless, I like Schneider's images and the ways that she has been influenced by painterly ideas in the manipulation of these images. They are very enchanting.

[desmirl]

In the mid-1950s, Polaroid only produced black and white film, and the size of the print was surprisingly large. Included in each roll of film was a tube containing a saturated wiper that was to be used on each print after it developed. If one followed the instructions with even a bit of care, the photos were preserved. We have photos shot by family members in the 1955-1960 time period that are every bit as sharp, clear, and contrasty as the day they were shot. Polaroid was an incredible product for its time, but digital has swept it out of the way. Now all we need is a much smaller, much more portable printer--b­attery-pow­ered and radio-frequency connected to the camera, and we'd be back to the magic of Polaroid prints.

[cktirumalai]

I remember a time (this was 1947) when the family photograph was a special occasion. Twenty or thirty people, spanning the generations, prepared for it with some care. The photographer came with his big, mounted, hooded camera, with its accordion-like folds, posed the group, the children being restless, disappeared behind black cloth, like the sun obscured behind clouds, and repeated the experience, clicking each time. And then one waited for at least a week before the copies came. But the result still compels after 60 years, because there was ceremony and deliberation behind it.
And I do remember the miracle of the emerging polaroid picture a dozen or so years later.