Daisy and Austen in front of Trailer - Proof before Printing - Limited Edition 1 of 1 Photograph

'Daisy and Austen in front of Trailer' (Till Death do us Part) featuring Daisy McCraickin and Austen Tate Proof b4 Printing / 2005, 128x125cm signed, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on a Polaroid Original, signed on front. What exactly is a proof before printing? The proofs are part of the printing process. They are usually the few last color trials before printing the edition. They are usually not perfectly color corrected yet. Sometimes a proof might be close in color but we still have to re-print to bring everything together. Proofs are by definition imperfect and part of the natural evolution of a print. Sometimes there is no white border or a kink. A proof is a proof of one step on the way to making a print edition.They are by definition, imperfect. Wabi Sabi. This print is very close to the final print. More about the printing process: Allow me to explain the process I use again , traditional photography uses actual film. In my case, I use expired Polaroid instant film. I have to make a negative from the Polaroid. That process is specialized and a secret. Once I have a 4x5" or medium format negative, I take it to my darkroom (with my custom made enlarger riding on rails) and shine a light through the negative onto the magnetic wall supporting my light sensitive paper for just the right amount of time and just the right color filter to reproduce the perfect reproduction based on the original Polaroid photograph. The light sensitive paper is 'Fuji Archive Crystal' and must be larger than the print will be. Sometimes the ‘grey scale’ is evident on the print trim. This is only for my printing color reference and is trimmed off during the mounting process. The exposed print is taken down from the dark room magnetic wall (in complete darkness of course) and introduced to my large format Colenta developing machine. The developed print will roll out after about 5 minutes on the outside of the darkroom where I check each print from the edition. During that 5 minutes, the piece goes through 2 chemical baths and 3 rinsing baths for a total of 5. Blown dry on the final stage. On the outside of the darkroom is the lightroom with the ‘daylight’ lights to be able to see the edition properly. Making sure the results are an accurate reproduction of the original. I don’t add any effect during the process. My work is always based on the original Polaroid photograph. The amount of trim on a piece depends on just where I place the paper in the darkroom with each edition I make. Sometimes the grey scale won’t appear. It just depends. The raw work is tacked to the light room wall with magnets for examination. The extra trim is useful for writing the edition number on, notes and mounting and also just for protection so I personally rarely trim prints at all. “I never remember the details of a Stefanie Schneider image, just the whole. She treads a third path between reality and dream that connects the two and truly sparks my artistic, visual freedom.” (Marc Forster) "Till death do us part", an episode of the "29 Palms, CA" project. A film shot on Polaroid stills combined with Super 8 film sequences. "Till Death Do Us Part" is the story of two young lovers, lonely souls escaping the abuse of reality into each other. Imagine a stranger suddenly in your path, you can just be silent with, and you feel you have known her forever. This is the experience of Cristal and Margarita, that begins when Cristal picks her up hitchhiking on a lonely dessert road. A runaway from a cruel older brother and a broken family, Margarita is searching on the edge of the shadows for a home. Cristal was also a lonely child and already dangerously close to vanishing when she finds Margarita. For her it is the begging of life. When she finds Margarita, she finds herself, she feels for the first time and discovers that she is not invisible after all. The childlike, roadside life they make together is a dream that they truly believe will last forever, and with the naive joy of beginners, they dive in, never sensing danger. When two lost souls become one and share everything, do they loose themselves further or do they become whole at last? When a girl has no home, no anchor, can she combine thrive with another? Once a human heart wakes up from isolation for the first time, enchanted by a reflection in love's mirror, can the dreamer fall asleep again, or must she wander searching to find it again forever? An artistic triumph for Schneider, this piece floats deeper into her exploration of the colors of the human psyche, separation, relationship, androgyny and the fringes of social reality. The Californian desert light and the vintage colors of Polaroid create a unforgettable atmosphere in the abandoned trailer park. Austen Tate gives Margarita her voice in poetry and Daisy McCrackin gives Cristal her sound in music. Stefanie Schneider lives and works 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 largely uncontrollable 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.