A Fine Eye For Detail 3
December, 1991
By Nancy Bartels
Senior Editor, Confetti
In an evocation of things past shot for Victoria magazine last summer, she photographically recreated elements of paintings by Dutch -American painter Gari Melchers (1860-1932). These close-ups are loving studies of Schneider's favorite components, light, line, and texture, as they are reflected in scenes of late-Victorian life.
Schneider's work on book covers gives her another opportunity to focus on the details and communicate on an intuitive level. A book cover is a kind of visual shorthand. A high-heeled shoe, a string of pearls, or a gardenia carry the freight of the whole book. The idea is to intrigue and tempt the potential reader to pull this particular book instead of one of a hundred others off the shelf. The photographer does not have to necessarily tell the story of the book, but should be "spiritually in tune" with it.
While she has done a dozen or more book covers, Schneider's dream project was a complete redesign and reissue of the 1901 edition of The Picayune's Creole Cook Book, produced in honor of the newspaper's sesquicentennial. Schneider designed, art directed, copy edited, produced and shot the photography for the book.
Over the course of years, the original book had been "updated" and "improved," and Schneider's goal was to restore the sense of the original. "We went back to the original text. We had this wonderful chef (Marcelle Bienvenu) who tested the original 2000 recipes and cut the number to 800. Then we researched turn-of-the-century books to get an authentic type face, and we kept the French language expressions from the original." The new version uses Schneider's photos as chapter headings and as cover art.
When left to her own devices, taking pictures without input from art directors or editors, Schneider continues her close-up exploration of light, line and texture. Her meticulously painted and arranged photos begin to take on the quality of paintings. Her flower paintings are reminiscent of Georgia O'Keeffe. As with O'Keeffe, her eye for detail does not equate with...