Kimberly Schneider’s first encounter in the darkroom was love at first scent—and still shapes her practice today. Calling herself a spiritual printer, she treats image-making as an act of discovery, where surprises often surface in the shadows and light. Poetry emerges alongside her prints as insights as the print unfolds. Inspired by Eastern philosophy and Minor White’s idea of equivalence, Schneider sees her photographs as subconscious self-portraits, transforming landscapes into vessels for deeper meaning.

©Kimberly Schneider; Explosion (Diptych 1) from the series Fire and Ice

DNJ: Tell us about your childhood.

KS: My childhood was both wonderful and chaotic. I grew up in Arlington Heights, in Chicago’s Northwest suburbs. I was always an old soul and felt like I never fit into the “boxes” others put people in.

Although there were good times, it wasn’t a consistently happy home. My parents were complete opposites in personality—like oil and water—and stayed together for 25 years solely for the sake of the children. That eventually took a toll on the whole family.

My mother was a teacher, a social butterfly, an avid tennis player, and an incredibly compassionate, open-minded person. She taught reading at a clinic in our home, and I grew up teaching alongside her. She created a safe, encouraging space for all her students. My mother lived for her children and loved with her whole heart. She was in better shape than men and women half her age (who she often beat at tennis!) and managed an active social life as well. We thought she would outlive us all. Sadly, that was not the case.

©Kimberly Schneider; Under the Sea from the series Into the Ether

My father is a serious, introverted electrical engineer. He thinks purely like a scientist. He meant well, but couldn’t understand or tolerate emotional reactions, which caused much friction over the years. We had a difficult relationship while my mother was alive, but I am grateful that we are on better terms now.

I grew up around some incredibly talented musicians, including my younger brother. During high school, I went to concerts nearly every weekend. I always had a camera in my hand, and I also made jewelry. Yet, while growing up, I never saw myself as an artist. I’m the first artist in my family. I fell into art as a career almost by accident. That came as a shock to everyone, including myself.

©Kimberly Schneider; Pollock (Diptych 1) from the series Fire and Ice

DNJ: You grew up in Chicago, studied both photography and philosophy, and have spoken about finding art through Eastern religions. What in that background most shaped the artist you became?

KS: When I was a junior in high school and needed to choose a required elective, I chose photography. I briefly considered applying to college as a photography major. But my guidance counselor essentially said I’d fail art school because I wasn’t great at drawing—before I’d even taken a drawing class—and told my parents the same thing. I ended up at Purdue studying psychology, a major my parents chose based on a couple of classes I liked.

I only stayed at Purdue for a year. Things were very tense at home when I returned, so I moved in with friends, then attended junior college while trying to figure out what I really wanted to do. I briefly considered film studies, anthropology, poetry, humanities, and education, but when I took my first philosophy class, I finally had my answer, or so I then believed.

I transferred to Colorado State University as a philosophy major, where I found classes in Buddhism and Taoism. I was so inspired by both the beauty in Colorado and what I was reading that I would stop and write poetry during my walks to and from class. While there, I found a part-time job working for a photographer. That inspired me to learn to shoot manually. I changed majors to art/photography; that’s when I began to see myself as an artist. I was still deeply inspired by philosophy, though, and kept it as my minor.

After enduring three semesters on the waiting list for Photo 101, I finally got in. I fell in love with the darkroom at first smell! I connected with street photography immediately, and my work quickly became very expressive. By my second class, I realized I couldn’t separate myself or hide things from my prints that I’d rather not share with the world. This was something I really struggled with at the beginning.

©Kimberly Schneider; Coastal Warning from the series Impermanence

I was incredibly lucky to study under Hal Gould and Loretta Young-Gautier as an intern at The Camera Obscura gallery. They essentially became my “photo family” and are partly responsible for the artist and printer I am today.

I was deeply inspired by what I learned and read in my upper-division Eastern religions courses, and that found its way into my silver gelatin printing process early on. The Taoist nature of my process unlocked something in me, and poetry became integral to my printing process. When I print a body of work, I never know its deeper meaning until I see something in the print as the image develops, which inspires me to write poetry. The poems guide my work throughout the making of the series. The more I print, the more that unconscious layer reveals itself via both the prints and the poems.

Being introduced to Minor White’s work and his concepts of equivalent images—photographs that are also metaphors for something beyond their obvious subject matter—changed everything for me. White’s work inspired me to see my images for what they were and what else they could be, and I realized I had been making my own “equivalents” all along without knowing it. Only then did I fully embrace the expressive nature of my work.

After choosing White’s work for my upper-division emulation project, I fell completely in love with true infrared film and desolate landscapes—despite not being someone who camps or is comfortable around bugs, rodents, snakes, or bears. More importantly, I learned to use infrared film to translate the ineffable.

My first infrared series was a cloud study, which included haiku I wrote about some of the images—before that, I didn’t share my poems publicly. Spiritual Rhythms followed; it was my first body of work featuring spiritual landscape photographs. I’ve been deeply inspired by desolate Western U.S. landscapes since, and infrared film is still my primary medium for lens-based work.

©Kimberly Schneider; Almost Home, Brooklyn, NY from the series Emergence

DNJ: Your mother’s death led to Emergence, and grief appears again in the art-as-healing work you teach today. Talk more about how making art is cathartic for you.

KS: My mother’s death could—and should—have been prevented, and it nearly broke me. I was living in San Francisco when I got the call that she had passed. My uncle was her estate lawyer. He later held her Power of Attorney (POA) after convincing her to rescind the one she had granted to me. A year before she died, I repeatedly begged him to do what had to be done to save her. I warned him that she’d be dead in a year if he didn’t. Rather than acting as I wished he might, he banned me from calling him. I was livid with him. I was also deeply traumatized by the fact that after I lost the legal power to help her, no one with legal power was willing to make tough choices that would have saved her life. Unfortunately, the fear I had expressed to my Uncle was correct, and she passed in late 2005. Her death, which was due to neglect, was horrible. She starved to death (and left a trail of evidence behind, which I saw with my own eyes). I don’t think I’ll ever be fully at peace about this situation.

Her death was the only reason I was able to return to NYC in 2006. I immediately started working at a medical publishing company, which let me rent my first post-college shared darkroom space. I managed just well enough at work…but I still couldn’t talk about my mother without my eyes watering, and I couldn’t be alone at home for more than 30 seconds without bawling my eyes out.

I have always been what I term a “spiritual printer”, and I was long overdue to create a new body of work. Making Emergence is how I pulled myself together and began to heal.

©Kimberly Schneider; In the Distance, Brooklyn, NY from the series Emergence

I was grieving heavily but greatly inspired to make new work. For me, silver gelatin printing is an intuitive and organically healing process. And infrared film has a way of revealing the invisible to me. Whatever I’m feeling or dealing with always finds its way out of me and into the prints. It allows me to “print the stress and pain away.” As soon as I began printing again, I felt as if I could exhale for the first time in years. I began working on Emergence immediately. The poetry poured out of me as I made the first image in this series. I was bawling my eyes out while printing and writing.

Emergence continued to evolve as I traveled to Washington, D.C., Virginia, Chicago, and Florida. In Chicago, I made photographs near my mother’s grave. It ultimately took me two years, until 2009, to complete the series. By the time I completed it, I started to feel lighter—more like myself for the first time in a long time—and was happy to begin enjoying life again. Making this series took printing as a healing process to a new level, which is impossible to take for granted. I realize that the type of healing I get from silver gelatin printing isn’t necessarily an organic process for everyone.

©Kimberly Schneider, Undercurrent, Point Lobos, CA from the series Awakenings

DNJ: You have described staying in Edward Weston’s former home and photographing at Point Lobos as life-changing. Can you elaborate on that experience?

KS: Point Lobos is a place I deeply connect with and return to as often as possible. My last trip there was in 2012, and I am long overdue to return. My love of this area dates back to my earliest days in my BFA program, after I was introduced to the work of Weston and his F-64 contemporaries. Point Lobos was Weston’s holy grail, and a mere 3 miles from his home.

Although I would love to be bi-coastal, I’ve lived in NYC for over twenty years. When I lived in San Francisco, I didn’t have a car. So I never had opportunity to visit Point Lobos, though I dreamed about being able to photograph this area.

Then, in 2010, I was invited to debut 15 prints from the Emergence series in Tree: Observed at Viewpoint Gallery in Sacramento, CA. I traveled to California for the event and intended to spend the following week in San Francisco. While there, I visited Scott Nichols Gallery, where I had briefly worked in 2005. Scott asked me if I’d like to stay at Bodie House on Wildcat Hill, where Weston had lived. I jumped at the chance and rented a car, making the three-hour drive immediately. I was only planning to stay a few days before returning to San Francisco to catch my flight home, but I was so deeply inspired that I extended my stay to spend more time making photographs at Point Lobos. When I wasn’t out photographing or preparing to do so, I spent time in Edward/Kim’s darkroom, looking at gorgeous vintage and contemporary prints made by three generations of Westons, and watching VHS tapes the Westons provided to their guests.

I came back from that trip a different photographer than I was when I arrived in Sacramento.

I fell in love with Lobos all over again when I began printing the first images of what later became my Awakenings: Point Lobos & Beyond series. The visual textures of Lobos also made their way into my photograms. They inspired my first cameraless landscape photographs and my vision for Equivalence: Parallel Landscapes of the Western US.

©Kimberly Schneider; Abstract Rock, Carmel, CA from the series Awakenings

DNJ: For many years, you photographed landscapes with infrared film. Why infrared? What were you searching for in the landscape using that technique? Did it impact your work moving forward, or did something else change that made you want to consider doing something different?

KS: Infrared has the unique ability to turn the world inside out and reveal what the naked eye can’t see. Making infrared photographs opened my mind to a new way of seeing the world and translated the deeper (often subconscious) meaning of my work so well that it made me appreciate the aspects of my work that used to haunt me (largely due to the way I was raised).

True infrared is still my favorite and primary medium for lens-based work, even though the real thing has been off the market since 2009. Once I began processing my infrared equivalents in D-19, a scientific developer more commonly used for X-ray films, my work glowed in a way that translated the ineffable so effectively that it became my primary medium. I am currently saving nine boxes of true infrared 4×5 film for my upcoming Equivalence series.

It’s been two (long!) years since I’ve had a home darkroom. I’ve continued to make infrared equivalents in a rental darkroom as often as I can, but renting darkrooms gets expensive quickly. Once I have more consistent darkroom access, I’ll resume work on my Haunted series.

©Kimberly Schneider; Wishful Thinking, Carmel, CA, from the series Haunted

DNJ: You describe your photographs as subconscious self-portraits. I consider all my images self-portraits, too. Could you speak a bit about why you believe this about your work?

KS: As I mentioned earlier, I’ve never been able to separate myself from my work or even from my analog photographic processes. My images are about both what is visible to the naked eye and what is not.

I’m not conscious of the deeper meaning of my work while making the images; rather, it slowly reveals itself during the analog printing process. The latter is also guided by poems, which often come to me via the spirits while I’m making the prints.

The poems begin providing insight before I can understand what I’m starting to see but can’t yet name in my prints. Throughout the process of making a body of work, my poems and prints collectively continue to guide me and the work, as they reveal deeper layers of information that are largely tied to things happening in my life (or which were buried so deep that I wasn’t aware of them before those revelations).

©Kimberly Schneider; Aerial View from the series Metamorphosis

DNJ: You began making photograms because your darkroom was unfinished during the pandemic. Once using a camera became possible again, why did you choose to continue working without one? What can you say without a camera that you could not say through a camera?

KS: For context, in 2019, it took me 7 months to find a plumber willing to set up a darkroom in a private NYC residence. I had been between home darkrooms for two years before that, and it was essentially a miracle that he finished the wet side mere weeks before the pandemic shutdown. Shortly after that, his wife gave birth, and I never heard from him again. While I did have some sporadic DIY help with the dry side a year later, I couldn’t find anyone willing and available to complete the bulk of the remaining work before I had to move and put that darkroom in storage four years later.

My experiences at Point Lobos also spoiled me, so I hadn’t been inspired to make film photographs locally—or rather, to risk wasting precious infrared film or photo paper on them, while in the middle of a California-specific series. But travel out west had been on hold for me for several years before the pandemic, so I was already suffering from a mean case of printing withdrawal when I began making photograms.

The freedom and whimsy of breaking traditional darkroom printing rules while making my first post-2017 silver gelatin images inspired me to take a deep dive into experimental cameraless photography.

I dove so deep into experimental work that I began to see my photograms as unique works of art that transcend photography. Further, working with snow, ice, the Pacific Ocean, seaweed, sand, flowers, and more opened my mind to the idea of what a landscape photograph could be as a unique art object, and my photograms brought me back to the western US, figuratively speaking, before I could return there in person.

©Kimberly Schneider; Lobos (aka The Way Through) from the series Winds of Change

DNJ: Your earliest cameraless photographs were made with ordinary items—flowers, ice, sand, produce, glitter and candlelight. What causes you to decide what to include and what to leave out in selecting items?

KS: The beauty of my process is that I make my photograms intuitively, by feel, as if I were working with a blank canvas and building it up layer by layer or altering it in some way.

I began making (and later teaching) experimental photograms while remaining in near-total isolation during the pandemic. I started with what I could find at home or at the corner store. I fell in love with specific natural materials, such as snow. Later, I began ordering materials from Amazon, often purely for testing. As my processes and materials became more experimental and sculptural, I began creating sculptural, cameraless art as healing methods that can be done with or without a darkroom, using materials found in most homes, backyards, or purchased inexpensively.

Experimenting with different ways to create layers of visual texture occurred naturally as my processes progressed. Various light sources, such as sparklers, or candles (which leave wax behind on the paper) sometimes create additional materials.

Most of my photograms are mixed-process triple or quadruple exposures, and like my film photographs, they are deeply layered in both content and process. I “work” my materials both before and sometimes during exposures. Sometimes I also add or subtract things midway through, based purely on intuition and what I’ve learned while testing many materials over the years.

Every change adds a new variable that affects my exposure. Since these are one-of-a-kind prints, I learn by doing, and if something doesn’t work, I tweak accordingly.

Further, some bodies of work (The Many Rings of Saturn, Fire & Ice, and the location-specific Winds of Change) focus on specific materials. Additionally, some photograms originated as demo prints for online workshop students, which also shaped some of my material choices.

©Kimberly Schneider; Haunted (aka Owlʻs Eye View) from the series Winds of Change

DNJ: You brought Pacific Ocean water, sand, seaweed and palm leaves from Windansea Beach back to New York. Does transporting these materials preserve a place, translate it, or create a new place in the darkroom? Please elaborate a bit on this aspect of your work.

KS: I wouldn’t say working with these materials translates them as San Diego/La Jolla photographs, as my processes vary.

Additionally, the resulting photograms carry a deeper layer of meaning that doesn’t reveal itself to me until I put them in the developer. Then it is subject to change until I decide the orientation based on what is revealed.

Collecting materials from Windansea Beach enhanced that, making them location-specific, cameraless Western US landscape photographs (sculpted with my own hands).

©Kimberly Schneider; San Diego #2 (Low Tide), Windandsea Beach, CA the series Winds of Change

DNJ: Your recent photographs have become more colorful, layered and physical, incorporating painted chemistry and hibiscus. Where do you see this new work taking you?

KS: The hibiscus-infused and, in some cases, selectively toned lumens and cyano-hibiscus prints were inspired by a story about deeply saturated hibiscus tea. They morphed as I found ways to make the prints slightly three-dimensional through mixed-media processes that let me bake some of the materials into the prints.

I have plans for some unfixed lumens, as well as making some versions of the originals for commission work.

©Kimberly Schneider; Layers Deep, Brooklyn NY from the series Impermanence

DNJ: Looking across the journey from Emergence and Awakenings to Winds of Change and Impermanence, what has changed most in your work—and what has remained constant?

KS: I am still the same artist I’ve always been: dedicated to the darkroom, deeply inspired by the beauty and textures of the western US and all things analog/landscape photography, and an intuitive printer. My vision hasn’t changed, even when the surface might look like it has.

I no longer consider myself strictly lens-based; I straddle the edge of traditional and experimental analog photography by pairing photograms with made-in-camera photographs.

Regardless of the process I use to translate my vision, all my images are equivalents (photographic metaphors) that reveal much more than what is apparent at first glance. Their meaning is deeply layered and reveals parts of me that I unconsciously exposed during the making.

˝©Kimberly Schneider; Perception and Reality, (aka Winter Hibiscus), Brooklyn NY from the series Impermanence

DNJ: Thank you ever so much for giving our readers a glimpse into your practice, Kim. I look forward to seeing what you do next!

©Kimberly Schneider; Reflections, San Diego, CA from the series Impermanence