Robert Heinecken
[Photographer, b. 1931, Denver, d. 2006, Albuquerque, New Mexico.]
The photograph... is not a
picture of something, but is an
object about something.
Some of my enthusiasm for the [found] photograph was based on the fact that there was some residual illusion of reality in it always, no matter what I did to it.
Many pictures turn out to be limp translations of the known world instead of vital objects which create an intrinsic world of their own. There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph.
An aspect of the work has to do with altering the literal/cultural meaning of existing public images by making minimal changes and additions. Using superimposition, juxtaposition and other contextual changes, I am functioning as a visual guerrilla.
I was never in a school situation where someone said, “This is the way a photograph is supposed to look.” I was completely open to cut them up, or do anything like that. I think if I had been in touch with people earlier, then I wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing that. It would have been too bizarre.
I have the feeling that there are things happening that are really very interesting things, if we can somehow find the key that makes them visible.
I am interested in what I term gestalts; picture circumstances which bring together disparate images or ideas so as to form new meanings and new configurations.
I am interested in the relationships and play between an unfamiliar picture/object context and the familiar photographic image.
