Stefanie Schneider - April Blue Eyes (Suburbia)

April Blue Eyes (Suburbia) - 2004,
featuring Michelle Hicks

59.5x79.8cm,
Edition 5/5.
Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, based on the original Polaroid.
Signature label and Certificate.
Artist Inventory #402.05.

This is the only available loose analog Edition of this piece.

This project "Suburbia" was shot on the set of Marc Forster's first feature film "Everything put Together' with Radha Mitchell, Michelle Hicks, Megan Mullally, and others.

Suburbs collectively, or the people who live in them
Suburb { a district, especially a residential one, on the edge of a city or large town }
synonyms [Outer edge , Fringes, Periphery, Limits, Outer reaches, Environs ]

Sunday in the suburbs, a sun-drenched summer day, deserted. The imagery of Stefanie Schneider's series Suburbia, created in the far west of the USA, in California, appears almost inconspicuous. With her camera, Schneider circles around an American idyll, focusing on an almost deserted garden. Surrounded by a white picket fence, flowers and trees stand in lush bloom under the dazzling sunlight. A day as empty and still as only Sundays can be. The lawn is meticulously trimmed, the garden well-maintained, its residents oblivious and languid. A snapshot that opens a window into the tragedies of an averagely unfortunate middle-class life.

A scene so familiar from countless films and American literature: an American idyll behind whose perfect facade everyday horror seems to lurk. In David Lynch's film Blue Velvet, for example, the narrative begins with a camera sweeping across a similar setting: the view over the garden fence, a meticulously groomed lawn, unnervingly perfect—only to end abruptly in a close-up of a severed ear, already crawling with ants.

Stefanie Schneider exaggerates, she intensifies: this is particularly evident in the disquieting color palette, as well as in the force of the imagery. Schneider juxtaposes the splendor of blooming roses and the abundant trees with emptiness. The fenced summer idyll seems stripped down: garden chairs sit unused around a table, a grill untouched and spotless, every object in its rightful place. Only the residents appear strangely lost. Schneider portrays them in the midst of their opulent lives, surrounded by carefully curated normalcy, bearable only with a well-chilled martini in hand, ready before lunch. She captures essentially banal scenes, yet the viewer becomes a witness to profound intimacy.

Schneider's series Suburbia thrives on the interplay of its motifs, narrating a story in the tone of American writer Raymond Carver. Her characters seem to have all lost faith in themselves, striving to exist in an idyll where they do not belong.

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, Bombay Beach Biennale.