INSTANTDREAMS published by Avenso, Berlin, 2014 - Monograph and C-Print - Limited Edition of 10 Photograph

INSTANTDREAMS - Monograph - signed Hardcover Edition, 62 pages. published by Avanso, Berlin, 2014 ISBN 978-3-935971-69-0 This book comes with a 20x20cm Edition of 10 plus 2 artist Proofs. 'Her last Call II' - Artist Inv. 16501. Digital C-Print, based on an original Polaroid, not mounted. with an essay by Heidi Korf (German / English / French) Enchanting Images & and Interview with the artist They are enchanting images. Hovering high in the air above the entrance to the studio, they rain down their radiance. Stefanie Schneider, photographic sorceress, spins tales of another world. Impossible to turn one‘s eyes away; after once into a sort of trance.

Summer 2014. The four of us are standing in the hall of an old East Berlin factory, recently transformed into Stefanie‘s new studio. Art is everywhere, a universe of color and light. Is this visual magnetism or pure magic right from the start? Much remains in boxes after a move not yet very far in the past. But even through cardboard and paper, the photos release a surreal luminosity; their gaze is gripping, ardently compelling.

Just as long ago at Christmas, that time-less time between the years, I suddenly remember. Sitting together as a family, we watched in fascination as slides succession, and my own image appeared again and again. The slide projector, humming loudly and turning the framed German families ever since the Sixties as a magic lantern casting its spell right in their own homes.

In Stefanie‘s art, in the here and now, light emanates out of itself. Her pictures, mechanical contrivance and magical contents in one, dissolve all borders. Whoever grants his assent is grasped and absorbed into their world.

The pictures tell tales. Of mad fairies and souls with their heads in the clouds. Of wigged women, loud and garish, frighteningly alone in their flashy trappings. And indeed, there is scarcely a single man here. But shouldn‘t the young woman with the orange artificial hairdo interlaced with white flowers allow her heart to open and, first of all, set free her canary? Is it possible to love a creature in a cage? For part of the year, Stefanie lives in California and it is there where she takes her photographs. Indeed, one is surely in the land of endless possibilities, wafted through a world of wonders, yearning only to dance through an open door into endless expanse. A visual release from every burden, a reward for laborious searching … the gate to paradise along the path of photography ... so that one staggers… with no firm footing … but filled with joy … nothing other than hovering, gliding, even sliding. This is a trip.

Stefanie‘s stories are drawn from depths that are difficult to name. My mind turns to C.G. Jung‘s concept of the collective unconscious, to the realm of fairy tales, myths, archetypes. They embody us, cast a light upon us – but our meager mind will never be able to unravel their secrets entirely, twist and turn as it may. We can only approach them with an open heart; it is best simply to let ourselves be touched, to be granted a vision. The pictures shoot forth from a comparable profundity and emerge immediately into the light. Hence they seem so super-natural, so disembodied – in spite of everything that is so palpably sexy about them. Every individual image arises from the story, is a narrative snapshot. Stefanie‘s art is as dense as dreams. It is painted upon a transparent background. And nightmares as well as grotesqueness are included in this bright sort of dream. Because for Stefanie, it is not a long way from the deepest depths to the highest heights. She has blended the ethereal and infernal, heaven and hell into one. Where is the center, the fixed core of the earth? Only she knows. I would say she herself is that point of rotation; she stirs a large cauldron and sends her viewers aloft. There they dance amid the clouds, move among a succession of mirages. 
Stefanie‘s art annuls everything. She causes it to fall into the light and implode. Her pictures are aware of their own ambivalence. With a shrug of the shoulders, they negate all consistency. Their beauty arises out of nothingness. Stefanie inscribes her questions upon the void and pushes it on past itself. She summons forth from the camera a world that is as riveting as the ancient tales told to rapturous children.

 Heidi Korf