The Weight of Light by Wendi Schneider

The Weight of Light is a body of work born from the intimate experience of aging and sadness for the world’s diminishing values — its ethical erosion, loss of compassion, and broadening division. These shifts in perception, including a progressive blurring of vision, resonate deeply. Navigating these realities has reshaped my world, often muting its vibrant hues. This drew my focus back to the foundational language of monochrome, my grainy darkroom work from the early 1980s, and the tonalities of historical processes like gum, platinum, and photogravure that have long inspired me.

My intention is to seek out and reveal the light residing within the shadows, to find that quiet luster that defines forms and hints at resilience, and to explore a depth of tones that mirror the corresponding depth of feelings. I find myself drawn to the liminal spaces at dusk — a threshold where opposing truths can coexist, and complexity gives rise to connection. This search for nuance in images void of color is made manifest through the application of gold leaf, a transformative layer that juxtaposes the timelessness of monochrome and the opulent, tactile presence of precious metal on kozo paper. With its inherent luminosity, it interacts with the photographic surface in unexpected ways, highlighting specific elements, and creating ethereal patterns. This touch of the sublime disrupts perceived reality, fostering a conversation between the tangible and the transcendent, the recorded moment, and the enduring allure of rarity and reverence.

Light emerges as a guide in this work. It is a subtle shimmer sought within the shadows—a fragile constant that, even as vision softens and the world shifts, offers a presence that reveals, distorts, and sometimes consoles. The Weight of Light is an exploration of the enduring power of luminescence—its profound capacity to offer respite through these essential values, both tonal and emotional, in a world yearning for illumination.








Wendi Schneider
Wendi Schneider is a Denver-based visual artist renowned for her ethereal photographs that fuse the fragile beauty of the natural world with the luminosity of precious metals. Drawing upon a rich background in painting and art history and inspired by her collection of early 20th-century photographs, Schneider crafts images that evoke a sense of transcendence and ephemeral grace.

Born in Memphis, TN in 1955, Schneider grew up in a family of several generations of artists, later studying Painting and Art History at Stephens College and Newcomb College at Tulane University. Her interest in photography germinated in 1981 when using a camera to reference models for her oil paintings. Mesmerized by the possibilities of the photographic art form and the alchemy of the darkroom, yet missing the sensuousness of oils, Schneider began to layer oils on her photographs to manipulate the boundaries between the real and the imagined. This process laid the groundwork for the unique layering and gilding that later became the foundation of her States of Grace series. After recreating the 1901 Picayune’s Creole Cook Book for The Times-Picayune newspaper, Schneider moved from New Orleans to New York City in 1988. She then began a diverse career that included photography for fi ne art, magazines, book covers, and advertising, and later (after a move to Denver in 1994) a return to design and art direction. In 2012, she began producing a collection of photographs featuring fl ora and fauna – the States of Grace series, which would become her signature body of work.

Schneider’s internationally exhibited and published work is held in several permanent collections, including the Asheville Art Museum, the Auburn University Library Special Collections, the Center for Creative Photography, the Memphis Brooks Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the New Orleans Museum of Art, among others. Schneider is represented by A Gallery For Fine Photography (New Orleans), Arnika Dawkins Gallery (Atlanta), Catherine Couturier Gallery (Houston), Etherton Gallery (Tucson), PhotoGraphic Gallery (San Miguel de Allende), Rick Wester Fine Art (New York), Vision Gallery (Jerusalem), and Wach Gallery (Cleveland).
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