Robert Heinecken (1931 – May 19, 2006) was an American artist who referred to himself as a "paraphotographer" because he so often made photographic images without a camera.

Early life and education

Born in Denver in 1931, Heinecken grew up in

Riverside, California Riverside is a city in and the county seat of Riverside County, California, United States. It is named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. As of the 2020 census, the city has a population of 314,998. It is the most populous city in th ...

, the son of a Lutheran minister. He joined the Navy in 1954 and served as a fighter pilot (though too short, he passed a height test by padding his socks with paper). Heinecken later served as an officer in the Marines, discharged as a captain in 1957. Heinecken completed his bachelor's and master's degrees in art at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

, where he studied printmaking as well as photography.

Work

Heinecken was known for appropriating and re-processing images from magazines, product packaging or television. In "Are You Rea" series from 1964 to 1968, for instance, he created a portfolio of images filled with unexpected and sometimes surreal juxtapositions by placing a single magazine page on a

light table A light table is a viewing device that is used to review photographic film or artwork placed on top of it. The horizontal form of a self-standing lightbox provides even illumination of the subject from below, or through a translucent cover plac ...

, so that the resulting contact print picks up imagery from both sides of the page. In the late 1960s, he also began cutting up popular magazines such as ''Time'' and ''Vogue'' and inserting sexual or pornographic images into them. He would place his collage-publications back on newsstands in Los Angeles to be sold to unsuspecting buyers. From 1971 on he started to expose food directly on light sensitive materials. He realized these "documentary photograms" first on black and white paper and later in colour in the series ''Various Lunches'' on positive

Ilfochrome Ilfochrome (also commonly known as Cibachrome) is a dye destruction positive-to-positive photographic process used for the reproduction of film transparencies on photographic paper. The prints are made on a dimensionally stable polyester base as ...

paper. In 1983/84 he created such ''Foodograms'' even on large polaroid sheets (20x24 inches) in collaboration with John Reuter in San Diego and Boston. In the 1980s, he created several series on American news television that involved photographing images on the television or exposing the light of a television set directly to paper to create what he called "videograms."

Teaching and legacy

In 1962, he founded the photography program at UCLA. He taught there until 1991. In 1964 he helped found the Society for Photographic Education, an organization of college-level teachers. He also taught at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a Private university, private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which gr ...

, where his second wife,

Joyce Neimanas Joyce Neimanas (born January 22, 1944) is an American artist known for her unorthodox approach to photography and mixed-media works. Personal life Born in Chicago, Illinois, Neimanas lived in Los Angeles, California for ten years before moving ...

, was on faculty. They split their time between the two cities for several years before they moved to New Mexico in 2004. As a professor at UCLA, Heinecken was a prime mover in the Los Angeles art photography scene. His influence was felt by many students and associates. Among them were John Divola,

Eileen Cowin Eileen Cowin (born 1947) is a Los Angeles–based artist known for photography, video and mixed-media installations that draw on the language of mass media and art history and explore the relationship between narrative, fiction and non-fiction, m ...

Graham Howe Graham Howe (born 1950) is a curator, writer, photo-historian, artist, and founder and CEO of Curatorial, Inc., a museum services organisation supporting nonprofit traveling exhibitions.ArticleDouble Exposure. December 1, 2007. Accessed August 2 ...

, Jo Ann Callis and

Ray McSavaney Ray McSavaney (December 18, 1938 – July 2, 2014) was an American fine-art photographer based in Los Angeles, California. Throughout a spartan but active life, practicing classical Western black and white Fine-art photography, fine art photogra ...

. Many of them, in turn, became influences on succeeding generations of art photographers. During his life he was mainly shown in traditional photography galleries, but two contemporary art galleries in L.A. began staging exhibitions of his work after his death: Marc Selwyn Fine Art and Cherry and Martin. Curators like

Eva Respini Eva Respini (born 1976) is a curator of contemporary art who served as chief curator (2015–2023) and deputy director for curatorial affairs (2022–2023) at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. She is also a lecturer at Harvard University ...

at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

now place his work in a conceptual art lineage, associating him with Pictures Generations artists such as

Cindy Sherman Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. Her breakthrough work is often co ...

John Baldessari John Anthony Baldessari (June 17, 1931 – January 2, 2020) was an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lived and worked in Santa Monica and Venice, California. Initially a paint ...

and

Richard Prince Richard Prince (born August 6, 1949) is an American painter and photographer. In the mid-1970s, Prince made drawings and painterly collages that he has since disowned. His image ''Untitled (Cowboy)'', a photographic reproduction of a photograph ...

Exhibitions

* 1986: "Selected Works, 1966-1986", Gallery Min, Tokyo * 1990: "Amnésie médiatique : l'oeuvre de Robert Heinecken, 1966–2000", Rencontres de la photographie, Arles * 2007: "Robert Heinecken 1932–2006: Sex and food, a memorial exhibition"", Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago * 2011: "Speaking in Tongues : The Art of

Wallace Berman Wallace "Wally" Berman (February 18, 1926 – February 18, 1976) was an American experimental filmmaker, assemblage, and collage artist and a crucial figure in postwar California art. Personal life and education Wallace Berman was born in Stat ...

and Robert Heinecken", Armory Center for the Arts * 2011: "Let the experiment begin: Photographic Process in Los Angeles, 1960–1980", Los Angeles County Museum * 2012: "Figure and form in contemporary photography", Los Angeles County Museum * 2014: "Robert Heinecken: Object Matter," Museum of Modern Art, New York

Publications

* 2006: "Recto/Verso",

Nazraeli Press Nazraeli Press is a publisher of books of photography. It was founded in 1989, in Munich, Germany, by Chris Pichler and has been based in the US since 1996. Nazraeli publishes roughly 30 new titles each year and has published over 400 with work b ...

, *1980: "Heinecken", The Friends of Photography in Association with Light Gallery, edition of 2000 signed copies

References

External links

Marc Selwyn Fine ArtMuseum of Contemporary PhotographyJoyce Neimanas artist web site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heinecken, Robert 1931 births 2006 deaths Artists from Denver Artists from Riverside, California 20th-century American photographers American printmakers UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture alumni University of California, Los Angeles faculty