Robert Heinecken: Object Matter

Description

Robert Heinecken (1931-2006) was a pioneer in the postwar Los Angeles art scene who described himself as a para-photographer because his work stood 'beside' or 'beyond' traditional ideas of the medium. Published in conjunction with the first museum exhibition of the artist's work since his death in 2006, this publication covers four decades of his remarkable and unique practice, from the early 1960s through the late 1990s, with special emphasis on his early experimentations with technique and materiality, which destabilized the very definition of photography. Culling images from newspapers, magazine advertisements, and television, Heinecken re-contextualized them through collage and assemblage, double-sided photograms, photolithography and re-photography. Although he was rarely behind the lens of a camera, his photo-based works question the nature of photography and radically redefine the perception of it as an artistic medium. As the most comprehensive survey of Heinecken's oeuvre, this book sets his work in the context of twentieth century history of photographic experimentation and conceptual art. An illustrated essay by conservator Jennifer Jae Gutierrez about the artist's experimental techniques, which ranged from photograms to photolithography to collage, contributes to the sparse scholarship on Heinecken's working methods.

Eva Respini is the Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston. Prior to that she was Curator at The Museum of Modern Art. Jennifer Jae Gutierrez is the Arthur J. Bell Senior Photograph Conservator at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Collage and rephotography were tools of choice of Heinecken (1931-2006), one of the first photographers to deconstruct the medium. His imagery was equally eclectic, relying on a grab bag of borrowings from newspapers, magazines, pornography to weigh in on the atomizing effect of mass media.--Howard Halle "Time Out New York" He ecstatically reimagined everything from Chanel advertisements to Time covers to Vogue images by the likes of Irving Penn and Wayne Maser.--Nick Remsen "Vogue" Heinecken...radically altered our ideas of what a photograph can look like.--Vince Aletti "Photograph Magazine" Robert Heinecken was an artist who put the medium of photography through the wringer.--Arthur Ou "Art in America" The hypersensitive, hyperaware imagery couldn't be more pertinent to today's conversations about culled images and fear of overstimulation.-- "V Magazine" This book salutes a self-described paraphotographer who experimented with found imagery-via such processes as gelatin-silver prints, collage, and photo-sculpture-and explored topics including mass media's visual impact and the depicition of the female form.--Debbie Grossman "American Photo"